How DOTA 2 is Keeping Old School Custom Games Alive

What do Counter Strike, PUBG, Team Fortress, DOTA and Teamfight Tactics all have in common? The veteran gamers out there will probably note that they all began as mods for other games. Counter Strike started as a mod for Half Life, Team Fortress Classic emerged from Quake, and PUBG–a derivative of ARMA–is credited with pioneering the Battle Royale formula and starting the genre's subsequent explosion.

But why DOTA? Why use a MOBA to highlight game modding and not games like Skyrim, which is ubiquitous in terms of mods, or Garry's Mod, a literal sandbox comprised of community custom games?

Line of succession

That's because Dota is the last link in a long line of custom game culture. Like the games mentioned above, Dota is also the product of a mod that innovated its own genre. Initially a Starcraft custom map, the game mode known as Aeons of Strife was the first game to feature defined lanes with autonomous units that would fight down them. Aeons of Strife was recreated in Warcraft 3 but with the benefits of the Warcraft engine like items and character abilities. Many know this game as Defence of the Ancients, aka the original Dota. Dota 2, in turn, was the birthplace of Dota Auto Chess. Auto Chess founded the Auto-Battler genre, and created the template from which all other Auto-Battlers, such as Riot Games' immensely popular TFT, emerged.

While the Starcraft and Warcraft franchises are most notable for their competitive scenes, that reputation sometimes overshadows the impact left by their custom games collections; which are generally referred to as arcades.

"Wc3[Warcraft 3] is the Roblox for millennials. So many custom games that defined gaming came from there feelstrongman."

Reddit

It started with Blizzard's release of StarEdit, Starcraft: Brood War's native map editor. StarEdit allowed players to tinker with native assets, opening the gates to the possibility of custom "arcade" games. Arcades, however, reached peak popularity in Warcraft 3. Not only did Warcraft have an improved version of StarEdit, it also had the more robust game engine. With heroes/levelling built in, Warcraft mappers had a much easier time making player proxies, which proved a headache in Starcraft. Even when Starcraft 2 released, which boasted a futher improved map editor than Warcraft 3, the Starcraft arcade community never quite reached the same heights.

The main relic of Warcraft's arcade is the aforementioned multi-billion dollar MOBA industry, but its impact can also be seen in more subtle ways. One such artefact is the prevalence of the Tower Defence (TD) genre. Given the nature of RTS games–building, attacking and defending bases, it was quite a natural transition into the TD genre. While the Warcraft and Starcraft arcades didn't create the genre from scratch, they are generally acknowledged to be responsible for it's growth into the mainstream. TDs were some of the most popular maps in the arcades by far, and many of those popular titles like Gems TD and Legion TD have now become franchises. They expanded from Warcraft 3 to the arcades of other games, and some are now stand alone games that can be found on Steam and even on the App Stores.

"The Tower Defense style of gameplay was brought to a more mainstream level years later when it was featured in certain maps on popular RTS games including Starcraft, Age of Empires II and WarCraft III in the Frozen Throne expansion."

PALGN

TDs weren't the only custom games popular enough to merit independence either. This thread on Hiveworkshop, the largest Warcraft 3 custom game community, attempted to collate all the arcade games that struck out on their own. The ensuing collection has a few games that fell by the wayside, but also a surprising amount of success stories, like Spellsworn; an arena fighter in the vein of Battlerite.

Starcraft 2, Blizzard's next RTS offering following Warcraft 3, was also unable to recapture the magic of the Warcraft 3 arcade. Attempting to correct their prior issue, Blizzard allegedly overshot the mark somewhat, and many felt the Starcraft 2 object editor was much too complex. It also meant that once mastered, the Starcraft 2 arcade had immense potential. Ironically, the most famous game from the Starcraft arcade that turned independent was actually one of the technically simplest. Town of Salem, 2015 internet's favourite social deduction game, is actually a descendant of the Starcraft 2 arcade.

Well, more specifically, it was based on an adaption of the party game Mafia (also known as Werewolf) in the Starcraft 2 Arcade; creatively known as Starcraft 2:Mafia(SC2:Mafia). Town of Salem took many inspirations from the changes that SC2:Mafia made to the original–mainly the addition of various roles–and felt that these changes were fun enough to deserve keeping. The Town of Salem devs even brought on SC2:Mafia's main creator, Darkrevenant, before they released the game on kickstarter.

Just as Starcraft 2's arcade was finding its footing, Valve pulled out a small project from their back pocked called Dota 2. Suddenly, millions of players were sucked out of the Battle.net ecosystem and into Steam.

Valve, being old school gamers themselves, were acutely aware of the legacy they had inherited. In the 2015 Reborn update, along with the Source 2 engine, they introduced a dedicated arcade hub to Dota 2. Futhermore, they even provided a level editor, material editor, model editor, particle editor and a developer console as well; an incredibly comprehensive set of tools native to the Source 2 engine.

With such a complete set of tools, Dota arcade scene evolved fairly rapidly too. In the early days of the arcade, the games were primarily recreations of popular Warcraft and Starcraft custom games like Legion TD. That evolved into three distinct groups: modified Dota, such as a 12v12 game mode or a 5v5v5v5, party games like an anime battle royale or a Mario kart-esque race through an obstacle course, and more traditional RTS campaign-style action RPG gamemodes.

Valve themselves have even made a few custom games for special occasions. 2017's Siltbreaker turned the game into a multiplayer campaign, sending players on quests that required them to navigate trap rooms, memorise boss attack patterns and coordinate for encounters like a MMO raid. They later revisited the concept in 2020 with Aghanim's Labyrinth, which introduced roguelike elements such as randomised rooms per run, and picking buffs after these encounters that would modify your abilities.

The crest and the fall

The peak of Dota's arcade, however, was in 2019. This is the year that Dota Auto Chess, an arcade game by Drodo Studios, went viral. At it's peak it had over 300,000 concurrent players, making it one of the most popular games on Steam, but contained entirely within Dota 2. Auto Chess drew attention to the continued existence of RTS arcades (seen in the numerous new articles published about it), but was also a catalyst of the eventual implosion of the Dota arcade.

Auto Chess' immense popularity resulted in many Auto-Battler variants popping up in the Dota 2 arcade, including one made by respected community figures Sunsfan and Jenkins. Ability Arena, first released in 2022, was a more Dota unique Auto-Battler, as it involved trading and managing abilities as well as units. While not quite recapturing the popularity of Auto Chess, it still commanded a respectable and dedicated audience.

Simultaneously, Auto Chess's developers Drodo Studios began to work directly with Valve due to Auto Chess' runaway success. This collaboration manifested in the form of a paid Battle Pass. Other arcade games did have Patreons and donations to support the creators, but the framework of a Battlepass began to encourage heavy monetisation in other arcade games.

This all cumulated in an incident where a streamer threw a tantrum in the Ability Arena discord, and reported the game for violation of GDPR–an EU regulation regarding the handling of user data. This issue wasn't specific to Ability Arena, as the issue was in regards to third party payment options for arcade game monetesiation, but any complaint would bring EU scrutiny on Valve. This eventually caught the attention of the Valve legal team, who also noted that the Steam editing tools came with a non-commercial license, which that was finally being enforced.

Thus, one spite fuelled complaint caused many of the most popular custom game creators to pull the plug. The controversial debate surrounding the monetisation of arcade games also grew to encompass the declining state of the games, which included their pay-2-win nature, and an increasing severe botting situation.

The fallout of this event has been...mixed. Most likely due to their status in the community, Sunsfan and Jenkins have chosen to respect Valve's legal requests and are trying to take Ability Arena third party. They plan to release it independently using Kickstarter, and have more than doubled their initial goal of $25,000.

The developers for many arcade games tend to be primarily from Russia or China; two nations famed for their enthusiasm towards Dota, but also their lax attitude towards international law. Valve, for their part, are infamously laisse-fair, and haven't brought any legal action to any creators, which allows these map makers to toe the line until they face real repercussions.

The cherry on top of this precarious legal situation is the delicacy of the arcade games themselves. Functionality of arcade games is notoriously fragile, and small often unmentioned changes to code can easily break hours of hard work by map creators. It's quite easy to understand why the number of new custom games is decreasing slowly. The return on effort is simply not worth it for the majority of people when hundreds of hours of effort can be broken after a random update. Valve's devs have been stated by Sunsfan and Jenkins to be interested in revitalising the arcade, but don't have enough manpower to improve things.

What's next?

The advent of the Auto-Battler genre may well and truly be the last big hurrah for the RTS arcade tradition. The lack of an arcade mode in more popular games like League of Legends/TFT, and Valve's stasis regarding the existing arcade modes mean that this may be the nadir of the direct RTS arcade legacy. The spirit of the arcade, however, does continues on.

Two of the most popular games in the world right now are Fortnite and Roblox. Fortnite has a surprising amount of custom maps that range from parkour maps to alternate game modes, and Roblox is a platform for players to create their own games, similar to Gary's Mod.

Custom games are the manifestation of the passion and dedication of the community, and as long as people are passionate about games, custom modes will exist for them. In a way, it's quite rewarding to watch as native arcades have slowly grown to this level of popularity. The amount of time, sweat, and effort that has gone into each custom game, for the sole purpose of making a game they love that much more fun for their fellow player, is staggering. Slowly, over time, those games gained traction and have resulted in some of the largest developments to the gaming landscape we've ever seen. MOBAs, Battle Royals, and Auto Battlers; the last three major booms we've seen in gaming have all originated from custom games. From the passion of the players.

It's always a delight when I find a mod for an old game, because it means that someone still loves it enough to keep finding new ways of enjoying it. For that reason, I really wish more studios of multiplayer games would be open to giving their players the keys to the kingdom; the tools to innovate, create and evolve their game. People still play SC2 custom games, almost 15 years later. People still play the original Dota, almost 21 years later. Even in HALO, the Master Chief Collection was released with an arcade game tab, because of the how much HALO custom games meant to their player base. I think the benefits are clear.

Let people modify your game, and they may be playing yours decades later too.