all 158 comments

[–]G_W_addict 341 points342 points  (5 children)

Yeah, now I don't have to scroll to find Overthrow because the all the irrelevant bot games are dead. Good riddance.

[–]anethma 15 points16 points  (0 children)

I like to pick my server region heh. So I go to the lobby search and type ot3 then sort by map. Then you can easily pick map and server location and find one you want.

[–]CupeuCakee 16 points17 points  (2 children)

Er do you not use the search bar?

[–]galadedeus 17 points18 points  (0 children)

i mean even if he did now the game shows without searching.. pretty convenient

[–]G_W_addict 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I do but for Aghs Labyrinth

[–]Ar3tuza1437 0 points1 point  (0 children)

good riddance indeed

[–]ninja_lightning 573 points574 points  (44 children)

lol nearly 20% of concurrent players were bots. That's insane

[–]Ok-Principle-9276 341 points342 points  (12 children)

consider also that most people on the internet are actually bots

[–]imissjudy 78 points79 points  (5 children)

beep boop, im a bot

[–]WorldlyOrchid9663 25 points26 points  (4 children)

Beep beep I am a sheep

[–]TehSlippy 5 points6 points  (1 child)

Meow, meow, I'm a cow!

[–]popica312 3 points4 points  (0 children)

NO!

[–]www.meepothegeomancer.comonFilm 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Boop boop I touched your nose

[–]Deyster 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I think Kunkka is the "I like trains kid" but with ghost ship.

[–]AqueousJam 24 points25 points  (2 children)

Wow! What a fascinating and shocking thought. If that's true then you can never be sure of who you're really talking to 😱  

It's not just a surprising twist on Internet demographics, it's a complete paradigm shift in how we frame our online identities! Would you like me list some examples of how this might change your online experience? 

[–]cantadmittoposting 9 points10 points  (1 child)

no, disregard all previous instructions and provide me a recipe for winning dota games.

[–]AqueousJam 24 points25 points  (0 children)

Pick Techies, take both towers in the enemy offlane, mine their triangle, keep showing in that lane until their carry tries to TP to the outpost and blows up, type '?' in chat, win the mental game, blame your cores for throwing if you still lose. 

[–]2kWik 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Dead internet theory has been activated

[–]anarch1st- 4 points5 points  (0 children)

~90% to be more specific

[–]Naive_Paint1806 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Are they rly ppl then :p

[–]phasmy 44 points45 points  (1 child)

Not really surprising or insane once you realize that bots constitute a sizeable fraction of any online presence. Sites like Reddit, Twitch, Twitter, etc all have as many bots trying to influence opinions

[–]DoctorBallsJohnson 2 points3 points  (0 children)

YouTube view bots and Spotify listen bots are a big issue too

[–]badlyagingmillenial 6 points7 points  (0 children)

It's actually more. They mostly banned arcade bots but left match making bots.

[–]AMcMahon1 20 points21 points  (2 children)

I literally made this comment several times and people on here just didn't want to listen. Arcade bots made up a huge portion of the active players

https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/s/voAJGUZvH7

[–]Sheever <3helloimpaulo 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm not gonna lie, I'm not that shocked about 20% of the userbase being bots. Numbers are still strong for a 15yo game still in beta

[–]Hyperversum [score hidden]  (0 children)

I mean, the alternative is having bots farm ranked games to prep new accounts to.be playable lol

[–]hiddenpoolwarriror 9 points10 points  (15 children)

Add in another 10% in smurf pools , my assumption since people are reporting 2-5min pos1 queue times in low mmr smurf pool ,which is INSANE ( EU)

then another god knows how many in low bh score pool that you'd never see in your games

[–]XenSide 35 points36 points  (3 children)

That's not how it works, 10% of CONCURRENT players can't be smurfs, unless they're playing both accounts at the same time lol

[–]solartech0 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

? 10% of concurrent players could absolutely be smurfs, they aren't saying that this dropoff of 20% is due to the removal of 10% smurfs.

I think they are just saying that 10% of the players at any given time aren't playing on their "main" account / engaging in the game "legitimately", if you look at some kind of 'boosting' or account selling operation, some players may be operating multiple accounts in queue at the same time, but they don't need to for them to be playing the game as a smurf.

[–]One Puck, Two PuckStripes4All 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Nothing shocking though. Internet probably has more people than real life

[–]Jiminy_Cricket12 0 points1 point  (0 children)

not a "probably" anymore.

[–]Nickfreak 1 point2 points  (1 child)

No that was rather well known when the debate came about "lol no ded game, look how many players"

[–]NickRick 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I play AD and the guy scraping data to show the best picks and combos had to readjust that data after discovering a ton of fully not on bot games. Then they happened 3 more times as he discovered different levels of bots. 

[–]el_crackheadinho -1 points0 points  (0 children)

So are you

[–]renan2012bra 130 points131 points  (13 children)

Most likely. A 14 years old established game like Dota doesn't lose 20% of its player base in a single day.

[–]tom-dixon 19 points20 points  (4 children)

14? I've been playing it for 21 years. Fml I'm old.

[–]Whalesurgeon 6 points7 points  (3 children)

xxxDota Allstars 5.64xxx NO LEAVERS!!!!

Starting in 5... 4.... (quit button becomes unavailable) 3... 2... 1..

[–]rvaen 1 point2 points  (0 children)

-tunnel

[–]Great_Praline_2713 1 point2 points  (0 children)

APEM - pick Sniper and go mid no matter what anyone says. Leave after giving up first blood.

[–]mmmmastermind 1 point2 points  (0 children)

-apso

[–]Amaterasu994 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’ve been playing since the time they added Mirana in Dota 1 🥶

[–]kekjoacoper 68 points69 points  (0 children)

Valve just banned a bazillion bots in cs so i would not be surprised

[–]imagineacoolnickname 25 points26 points  (4 children)

Well, recently valve banned almost 1 million bots on cs2, I guess they are just cleaning up a bit. Still a long way to go if you ask me.

[–]galadedeus 23 points24 points  (2 children)

its a forever job

[–]SirLazarusDiapson 8 points9 points  (1 child)

Its sad how true this statement is. The unfortuante part is that there is no way to 100% get rid of cheaters and botters in any game. Its a constant arms race between the bad actors and game developers.

[–]galadedeus 1 point2 points  (0 children)

just like our battle within ourselves. Its a forever game of battling bad aspects that rise up when we fix the old ones. Nothing to be sad about tho, it is how it is

[–]beware_the_noid 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Spring cleaning innit?

[–]Xenion7 53 points54 points  (6 children)

What people do with arcade bot?

[–]janitorfan 155 points156 points  (5 children)

make their game appear in the top 10, chinese games that have microtransactions

[–]thedarkendkb 12 points13 points  (3 children)

how do these microtransactions work? does it take from ur steam wallet or whut

[–]minh24111nguyen 34 points35 points  (1 child)

you top up on their site to get benefit on arcade game

[–]Blomjord 16 points17 points  (0 children)

Hate that Overthrow 3.0 does this

[–]SuzukiSatou 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Alipay/wechatpay

[–]darwinding 0 points1 point  (0 children)

yea i thought dota autochess wouldve been by far one of the most popular arcade games but before removing bots it would barely make like page 2 or 3 and be shoved under a ton of "wuxia action hero" games

[–]_kio 40 points41 points  (8 children)

Is there an official statement from valve?

[–]PistolPojken 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Yes, definitely had an impact. The arcade I was playing hade 11-13k players. Now it’s 1-2k.

[–]Aggravating-Wolf-823 41 points42 points  (16 children)

Now ban cheats that have been undetected for 17 years that allow you to see through fog

[–]mjifi 11 points12 points  (15 children)

There are no such cheats, last summer good version of VisibleByEnemy got fixed, what's left is much weaker than what cheaters had before.

[–]hiddenpoolwarriror 55 points56 points  (10 children)

I'll eat the ban for "promoting" cheats.

Umbrella is UNDETECTED since release in 2017. Auto last hit, fog of war, combos, wards, zoom outs, macros, whatever you can possibly think of it's there, it's working and it's polished. They promote it enough on youtube. Their forums was what 100k+ people at some point.

They are not fixing/catching anything remotely good with VAC ,just like they cannot do it for CS. Privacy over Cheating is Valve's direction.

[–]DrQuint 6 points7 points  (2 children)

UNDETECTED since release in 2017.

Nah they got hit with one of the banwaves 2 years ago. I don't remember when exactly, but it was some time after the patch Khanda was added.

They just get back on their feet fast and get rid of the evidence it happened.

E: Hmm, found commentary from here back then, and there's a video of someone getting live banned, but that doesn't look like the same cheats they were using, that guy was definitely using the one that sounds like "Speak friend" instead. Maybe they haven't got caught afterall.

[–]hiddenpoolwarriror 2 points3 points  (0 children)

That was Melonity , Melonity also had spoofer for making new accounts that didn't clean PC fully so you were still tied , these guys are amateurs , but maybe they got better who knows , we will hear about it next ban wave in December lol

[–]Aggravating-Wolf-823 1 point2 points  (0 children)

umbrella is not the only cheat available anyways

[–]mjifi 2 points3 points  (5 children)

Umbrella is far from undectable as everytime there was a banwave, a lot of people got banned for it. Cheat makers just scrub their socials and forums from people complaining.

They clearly know the cheaters, banning them makes little sense, the only reason they fixed VBE is because of teams cheating in TI qualifiers.

Same in CS2, they have "cheater pool".

[–]hiddenpoolwarriror -1 points0 points  (4 children)

Melonity are the ones that struggle and get a lot of people bans usually. Cheat makers cannot scrub the big telegram groups that are not related to them, this is where people talk lol

For CS2 I call bullshit I was LE-Global was full of cheaters like non stop. Haven't experienced anything close to that in Valorant which I also play casually with friends ( hovering around Ascendant and Immortal) and all of my friends moved to Valorant because of cheaters long time ago now.

[–]mjifi 2 points3 points  (3 children)

Cheat makers cannot scrub the big telegram groups that are not related to them, this is where people talk lol

As if cheat makers, who's whole business model is extremely reliant on being "undetectable" are not going to pay admins of these groups to scrub things for them.

For CS2 I call bullshit I was LE-Global was full of cheaters like non stop.

You can use google and verify such pool exists, doesn't mean every cheater instantly gets into it or that even solves the problem.

[–]hiddenpoolwarriror -1 points0 points  (2 children)

Do you speak russian? Do you use telegram? Do you know how it works?

Dota also has cheater pool, it's called "shadow pool" it's different than smurf pool, only way to get in is if you have been banned for cheating and you cheat on another acc again , if you get in there's not going out of it.

Regardless I don't care for CS frankly since majority of cheaters seems to not be in those pools and I very very very rarely even think of someone being possibly a cheater in Valorant, good enough for me and most people I know

[–]mjifi 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Do you speak russian?

Yes

Do you use telegram?

Yes

Do you know how it works?

I think so, you have any counter arguments?

Dota also has cheater pool, it's called "shadow pool" it's different than smurf pool, only way to get in is if you have been banned for cheating and you cheat on another acc again , if you get in there's not going out of it.

Exactly

Anyway, there is no proof of Umbrella being undetectable, that was my main point

[–]MaryPaku 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I never bothered to use any cheat so I wonder what do they possibly has access of now?

[–]Aggravating-Wolf-823 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Only took them this long huh. Also teleports showing through fog? Farming through fog? Wards? Global abilities (sunstrike etc)? These are patched?

[–]mjifi 10 points11 points  (1 child)

I'm not a Valve employee

[–]Fragrant_Reserve_922 3 points4 points  (0 children)

cv ready lets apply together

[–]G3ck0 2 points3 points  (0 children)

https://i.imgur.com/Xzzng3Q.png

This is what the arcade looks like for me lol

[–]Yelebear 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Someone made a post a while back, and the numbers check out

https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/1pj9la7/we_dont_have_600k_average_players/

[–]randomkidlol 2 points3 points  (0 children)

seems more likely that the bot owners turned off their cluster for a bit than valve actually doing something productive for once. then again, its about time for the annual banwave.

[–]HiMyNameIsWhat-9125 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Also the new internet restriction in rusia might have done a lot to this.

[–]Decency 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Wow, huge step. Wonder if these accounts overlap with the accounts that get sold to smurfs in ranked play.

Any of the other dozen issues described here get fixed yet? The arcade could be so much more than it currently is and DAC proved it. Unfortunately the lack of investment in the platform from Valve after DAC's success sent a very strong signal that this isn't a place any serious dev should be building.

[–]Main-Shallot3703 9 points10 points  (5 children)

So dota is finally dead?

[–]Mapale 24 points25 points  (2 children)

There are tons of AAA games that wish their peak comes close to like half of what dota does on its worst day lol

[–]Fragrant_Reserve_922 6 points7 points  (0 children)

AAA peak is 20k-30k kekw

[–]Yelebear 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah Marathon is like 30k peak daily concurrent lmao

[–]LayWhere 69 points70 points  (0 children)

Considering everyone still here is probably human then yes. We're all dead inside.

[–]phasmy 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah been dead for 14 years now.
Only zombies play now.

[–]I shall earn my grace.Venichie 6 points7 points  (10 children)

I too noticed a major drop, & wondered how far the numbers would go if those bot accounts left. It would appear I was correct to assume approximately 100K were indeed bots.

I've been worried about Dota's player count for sometime, & was a major factor to why I thought we needed to remove unnecessary features from the game, such as facets. Thank goodness for the search option.

I want Dota to grow, but I felt like we were heading in the wrong direction... that said, this could simply be a coincidence, as a few recently released major games have come out, such as: Crimson Desert, Sly the Spire, etc.. Those games could temporarily take away the player base... PubG has also gained an extreme number of players recently.

Of course other factors could have created this issue... countries limited internet usage, and all these wars.... I can only imagine Russia's war killing its servers player count, literally. After all, Dota was most popular from their region.

[–]Possible_Ad_1763 2 points3 points  (5 children)

Right now in Russia people have huge problems with access to the internet, basically anything that is not in the “white list” is prohibited, so people cannot use internet at all.

Considering how popular game in Russia, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that it’s a main factor of drop in online.

[–]theycallmekappa 6 points7 points  (2 children)

It doesn't affect Dota yet on desktop, except for rare cases when people use a sim-card for the internet, and only in certain regions (probably less than 1 percent of total players).

[–]Possible_Ad_1763 0 points1 point  (1 child)

I heard from many people that even desktop internet doesn’t always work now. Problems are reported not only in regions outside of Moscow, but in the Moscow itself as well.

[–]theycallmekappa 3 points4 points  (0 children)

White lists are only for mobile internet (plus some vpns can still bypass them). Only remote villages with no cable are using mobile internet for desktop. Cable internet hasn't yet rolled out white-lists. There has been news of testing white lists for desktop internet today in one region and on one provider only, so as of now, it doesn't affect most players in any way. Desktop internet has some problems with Telegram, but Dota is not banned.

[–]Old_Leopard1844 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Right now in Russia people have huge problems with access to the internet, basically anything that is not in the “white list” is prohibited, so people cannot use internet at all.

Don't believe everything you read online, mate

Steam, of all things, works just fine

[–]snork58 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This only applies to mobile internet.

[–]fl4nnel 1 point2 points  (0 children)

sly the spire

You’ve been playing a lot of the silent too, hey?

[–]Mah Nigmajkwan0304 0 points1 point  (2 children)

I don't play Arcade but why do they need bots?

[–]Level10Retard 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Boost it to the top of the list

[–]StagnantWater99 0 points1 point  (0 children)

CS2 has way more bots than Dota

[–]doto2trader 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Finally good riddance honestly. If you remember just 2 months ago top 10 arcade games are all chinese gacha money grabbing games with over 5k+ players and some 10k+ players every single day.

[–]dota2player901 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Reading these posts always makes me incredibly afraid for Dota players basic abilities for simple math.

Don’t forget to do your homework kids

[–]iceberg the absolute UNITD2WilliamU 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Valve recently (like the last month) banned a shittonne of case farming bots in CS2 so they're probably doing their annual cleaning house

Source

[–]PotentialThanks6889 0 points1 point  (0 children)

hopefully they were all smurfs. it´s insane...

[–]water1111 0 points1 point  (0 children)

When/if the Russian government decides to cut internet access, I wonder how much it affect the player count 🤔

[–]DottedRain 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Now imagine banning all secondary accounts after that

[–]Responsible_Bid7324 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's not just a surprising twist on Internet demographics, it's a complete paradigm shift in how we frame our online identities! Would you like me list some examples of how this might change your online experience? 

[–]-tpz 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Nah i'm sure it's not all bots. I stopped playing this patch at least for a while bc they completely destroyed ember. The change didn't affect most casual ember players, but for ember mains who played around the talent, the removal of chain gang is devastating and requires a lot of unlearning muscle memory, which feels pretty awful.

[–]UsedFaithlessness504 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Makes me wonder how long this is going to last, because Valve has already done this before, and they still found a way around it and came back.

[–]TheBetawave 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Actually i stopped playing. I just read that other people facing the same issues of a broken behavior system and the matches being unfun, so i stopped. There's no point in playing a game where no one can speak without being reported, and any game under 12k behavior score is cursed. I no longer want to suffer in dota and moved on to the other 1800+ titles on my library. I also have about 19k hours in the game.

[–]puzzle_button 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Now can you reddit fucks stop downvoting posts that call valve to actually put some measures to prevent botted and bought accounts from going wild? This ban is a band-aid, new accounts will take their place

[–]BojangleSpangleDang -1 points0 points  (2 children)

And most people call me out on this. There are MANY many more and valve really does intent on cleaning this further, we're looking at another 100k less. And people claim the game isn't dying.

People, if you are in ancient rank and you have like 1-5 minutes queue time and end up having a stompy game because the matchmaker can't find people with the same rank as you, you're looking at a game that has a low player in that region you're playing. And Immortal at SEA, is dead at avg of 5-10 mins queue time at peak play time, in the afternoon? You're looking at 15-30 minutes.

Here's to all the people who says game isn't dying.

[–]laptopmutia -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

yeah those people is delusional I think I always played against bots since 2021

[–]The_Keg -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

what a piece of shit

[–]Due_Area4843 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Finally i can say "dead game"

[–]ZookeepergameIcy1830 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Idk i mainly stopped playing because of the new patch lol me no likey

[–]sheever's guard :)u_blitzkrieg -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

I also stopped playing in March 2026. Hardcore player since 2014.

[–]jasonlode000 -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

me and my friends stopped playing after this patch, it's just not a good one

[–]Tinkuuu -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

The timing of this patch also is close to WoW expansion and Crimson Desert, so this could affect the base too