Valve to Dota 2 fans: Yes, Diretide is coming!

You did not misread. This is for real. Diretide is coming to Dota 2! Who said so? Valve did!

In a recent blog post Valve addressed the issue of Diretide not being released in time for Halloween. This was partly due to a major update, which was scheduled to be released in time for Halloween. The company also admitted that it underestimated how much Dota 2 fans wanted Diretide. So in order to fix things, the next Dota 2 update will come with Diretide and a few changes and additions that, according to Valve, “makes it more fun than before.”

What is Diretide?

For those of you who are not familiar with Diretide, it is an annual Dota 2 in-game event for Halloween. This event features a new game mode where players collect and steal each other’s candy on the regular Dota 2 map.

From time-to-time, the boss monster Roshan will ask sweets from any of the heroes and will proceed to chase and attack the particular player should he decline. Each match concludes with both parties ganging up to kill Roshan to get rewards. In addition, the players who record the fastest time killing Roshan for the week will receive a special reward. Last year, the prize was a sweet Golden Baby Roshan courier.

Dota 2 fans threw online tantrum

When Valve failed to release the Diretide event, the Dota 2 community threw a major online tantrum, spamming this simple message “Give DIRETIDE” on Valve’s Faecbook page, and even on other non-Valve related pages including Volvo, the Prime Minister of Malaysia Najib Razak, Russian president Vladimir Putin, and US President Barrack Obama.

As mentioned earlier, the post wasn’t all about Diretide. It also mentioned about a major Dota 2 update, but it isn’t the 6.79 patch that we previously talked about. This major update is still on the works. Here’s an excerpt of Valve’s announcement regarding the next major update:

The rest of the update we’ve been working on is in final testing, and as each of us finish up our work on it, we’ve been jumping over to Diretide. Second, we’re pretty sure the update that we’ve been working on for a couple of months is going to be pretty significant.

The rest of the announcement can be found on the official Dota 2 blog. Dota 2 is free to play on Steam.