Gamescom 2011: Gabe Newell Says DOTA 2 Probably Won't See 2011 Release

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What Valve giveth, Valve taketh away: it was only yesterday that a representative from Valve told us that the studio was still shooting for a 2011 release date for DOTA 2, but Valve boss Gabe Newell said today at Gamescom that it probably won’t make it to Steam and other digital distribution platforms until sometime in early 2012.

To be fair, the representative did give us a disclaimer when they talked of a Holiday 2011 release date, saying that they’d try for it, but there was still a chance that DOTA 2 would miss 2011 altogether. It seems that’s been all but confirmed by Newell, who gave us Valve‘s plan for the game after they figure out what business model they want to go with:

We’ll just go into progressively wider and wider distribution. I don’t think it’ll be shipped until next year. But then, with a game like this, you just keep shipping. You add new heroes. You try out new game modes. You are constantly tweaking item and hero balance. It’s very much an ongoing thing.

Concerning that business model they still haven’t decided on, it seems like going free-to-play with DOTA 2 is still in the cards, but Newell was hesitant to make any promises.

We don’t know. We don’t have plans yet. The problem isn’t to figure out what your monetisation strategy is. If you have something with a super careful monetisation strategy and it sucks, it doesn’t matter. The most important thing is to do something that resonates well with the existing Dota players and creates a vehicle for new players to join into the community. That’s the hard problem. That’s the interesting one to solve.

So, probably no DOTA 2 until 2012, but it might be free-to-play when it arrives, which sounds like a pretty good trade-off to me. As for all of you who are saddened by the news that you probably won’t see DOTA 2 this year, cheer up! After all, you’ve still got that DOTA 2 beta to look forward to, and that’s just a few weeks away!