Dota 2 is unlike any other game I’ve ever played, both in its nature and history. It started off as a StarCraft mod popular enough to be ported to Warcraft 3, which then exploded into a kaleidoscope of player-made variants and eventually coalesced again into a single entity titled Defense of the Ancients Allstars. There is no single author of Dota, though all the anonymous contributors who’ve made it what it is have come from the community that first started playing the mods. As such, Dota is the very definition of grassroots game development. The idea of a game made by the people for the people, as a certain American president might put it, fills me with a particularly warm and fuzzy sensation.

Dota 2 is unlike any other game I’ve ever played, both in its nature and history. It started off as a StarCraft mod popular enough to be ported to Warcraft 3, which then exploded into a kaleidoscope of player-made variants and eventually coalesced again into a single entity titled Defense of the Ancients Allstars. There is no single author of Dota, though all the anonymous contributors who’ve made it what it is have come from the community that first started playing the mods. As such, Dota is the very definition of grassroots game development. The idea of a game made by the people for the people, as a certain American president might put it, fills me with a particularly warm and fuzzy sensation.