Valve Tiptoes Into Pay-To-Win Territory With Dota 2's Beast Brawl
Dota 2 is one of the best games out there, and a shining example of free-to-play done right, right?
Turns out, all is not well in Valve-land, as a recent update shows. The Year Beast Brawl, a temporary event that celebrates the Chinese New Year, lets players add a ferocious monster to their five-player teams. The monster can be upgraded with ability points acquired through gameplay... or via the cash shop, as The Verge points out.
In other words, you can pay money to power up your beast and increase your team's chances of winning. Sure, you can acquire the points to do so via gameplay as well, but any kind of direct "pay money to increase power" benefit in a MOBA is pretty much heresy.
Granted, the Year Beast Brawl is a short-term thing, ending on March 2, but it's still got some players upset about the precedent it sets. Personally, I don't think Valve would be crazy enough to introduce more of this kind of thing into Dota 2, but if this "test case" makes a lot of money, it's going to be hard to resist. Developers with nobler intent have done worse in shorter periods of time.
What do you think of all this? Harmless short-term gameplay mode or disturbing harbinger of things to come?
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About the Author

Jason Winter is a veteran gaming journalist, he brings a wide range of experience to MMOBomb, including two years with Beckett Media where he served as the editor of the leading gaming magazine Massive Online Gamer. He has also written professionally for several gaming websites.
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By Anthony Jones - 6 days ago
the year beast has nothing to do with the main side of dota 2 which is the pvp aspect
you don't gain any significant power over anyone with using money in the beast mode you just get skins and things like that
go back to league of legends . at least its legit . foolish people frequenting dota 2 lol
I didnt even notice till yesterday that microtransaction bullshit even reached full 60 buck games, like Unity or that super ripoff Evolve that spammed like 20 DLCs in the first day.
We also won without upgrading the beast at all many times.
Anyways as long as the stat increases you can get don't make a huge difference it's fine.