It’s taken a little while, but Valve will finally be directly servicing their MOBA fans in one of the most mature and competitive eSports markets in the world after the South Korean developer and publisher announced they were shutting down their Dota 2 servers.
In a post on their site, Nexon announced that from December they would no longer be operating servers for Dota 2. A rough translation of the announcement says that Valve will take over distribution and marketing of the free-to-play MOBA through Steam from December 10.
All in-game purchases and currency will then be handled through Steam, rather than Nexon’s distribution services. It also means that Nexon are effectively stepping away from the game entirely, leaving it up to Valve to run all the marketing, advertising and events in South Korea.
It’s difficult to say what will happen to Dota 2 in South Korea. The region is already heavily under the grip of Riot and League of Legends, with StarCraft 2, the fighting game scene, World of Tanks, Heroes of the Storm and other titles in the background. It might make more sense for Valve to promote the game harder in, say, South America instead.
One other practical change from this will mean the marketplace will no longer have Nexon-exclusive items, such as the Hyeonmu courier.
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