Project DotA 2 has a new boss, or how Gabe has his rest

To begin with, if we put aside the negative emotions about the money spent on this year’s Battle Pass, it’s safe to say that Valve and DotA 2 did their best with Compendium in 2020.

Battle Pass 2020 is great, if not the best. But here a completely logical question ripens before us. Who is the person behind this?

Many will immediately say, “this is Gabe again wants our money to buy another 100 pairs of new sandals.” But no, as everyone knows, Gabe has been “stuck” in New Zealand since the beginning of April due to the COVID-19 epidemic.

It’s no secret that Dota is Valve’s most profitable project, besides Steam itself, and Gabe is the king of the empire. So, what then prevented such an influential person from returning to the office and making all the necessary edits before the Battle Pass was released?

But judging by how big boss Newell was in no hurry go home to Seattle, then there is no great need for that. And it is unlikely that a chat in Zoom or somewhere else would very much help him in solving serious issues.

And if there is no rush and need, one could conclude that the process will standstill. But it was not there. The Battle Pass came out, not without problems, and is now being supplemented, with new items and other content coming out. But as we know before, without Gabe’s approval, they did nothing a priori. If so, does this mean that all Newell’s responsibilities have been taken over by the assigned leader?

Who is this person and when did his work begin? Did Gabe retire from all affairs, as an ideological inspirer? Let’s try to think about what plans the new head of DotA intends to implement in the near future?

Valve

Gabe Newell built his company differently from his rivals and business competitors. Anarchic company structures allow employees to independently choose which project to work on. Convenient, isn’t it? No one at Valve has the right to tell employees what to do, not even the great Gabe himself.

Employees themselves form working groups, lure each other into different projects, they themselves decide who will be the team leader on a particular project, and who will coordinate it.

Don’t believe me? here’s an example. In Dota Underlords, an appeal was issued to the community that there will be no updates in the near future. And they referred to remote work due to the pandemic.

But as it became known later, the developers were working on another project. Many immediately thought of some kind of mystical DotA 3. But in fact, a group of people went to develop/refine the Battle Pass and related things, which is why Underlords lost its audience.

According to an official source, there are now about 500 people under the leadership of Gabe Newell. Also, do not forget about freelancers and Work Shop. And among these people a man has already appeared, to whom Gabe handed over the reins of government. And apparently, the new “boss” did not disappoint him, not from the point of view of the Battle Pass profitability, not from the point of view of criticism from the community (not counting the first hours of launch, when DotA 2 slightly died).

After the release of Battle Pass 2020, rotations between employees ended, and a team was already staffed for the DotA project. Not just a team for a trial period, but the one that Gabe himself has already approved.

I will say frankly that more than one source has not disclosed the name of the person who led the project. But it is reliably known that the famous Steve Jaras acted as his assistant in this difficult matter.

Steve Jaras

Steve is responsible for the storyline of the entire project. And with his arrival, everything has changed dramatically and these changes are hard to miss. His interesting vision of the painting gave the audience a chance to hear the character’s story.

Think of heroes like Pit Lord, Pangolier and Dark Willow, they arrived with no information, no plot, they were just introduced as new heroes of the game. If the first still had roots from distant DotA and its LORE, then the other two heroes were ordinary dummies.

But with the arrival of Steve, everything changed, we had a story about the disagreements between father and son, when we were announced Mars and told about his relationship with Zeus. The same tendency for a holistic story can be observed with the release of other heroes.

IceFrog

Abdul Ishmael, aka IceFrog, has not lost its home place, and still remains the ideological inspirer of DotA. But do not forget that he always focused on the very mechanics of the game, and not on the plot component and LORE. Back in the days of the first DotA, other people helped him with ideas. So Ice Frog’s collaboration with Steve is pretty obvious. One creates a model and mechanics, the other qualitatively introduces this model into the existing world and makes it alive.

Together, they embody the same idea, setting the direction of game design. They are creating a new product that is closely related to a game that has been around for more than five years.

But Gabe watched out the work process of such a tandem, and we remember what came out of this with the example of Pango and Willow. Therefore, it becomes obvious that Gabe has handed over the reins of the project.

It is also worth noting that Steve and Abdul hardly became this person, as one and the other have long been in this company and could have secured this place for themselves a long time ago, but fortunately or unfortunately, a third person was chosen for this position. The main function of which was the compilation of the creations of two talented workers.

What do you think about this, maybe through Zoom?