Valve has a history of taking mods and developing standalone versions of them. The original DotA was a Warcraft III mod, which was spawned from a Starcraft mod called Aeon of Strife and now, the extremely popular Dota Auto Chess mode is a standalone Valve game called Dota Underlords.
RELATED: Valve is Developing a Standalone Version of Dota Auto Chess
Those who own a The International 2019 Battle Pass can play Dota Underlords right now in its beta form. All you need to do is log into Dota 2 and you will see the option to download the game from the main menu. If you don’t have a Battle Pass yet but would love to play Dota Underlords, then there’s an open beta coming sometime in the future, or you can just throw R143 at GabeN and get access right now.
Valve explains in an official announcement post that:
[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”#33ffe9″ class=”” size=”22″]A few weeks ago we posted about our love of Auto Chess and how we were working on our own standalone version of it. In that same post we promised we would share information about the game soon. As it turns out, “soon” is today. Dota Underlords is a new stand-alone game that pits you against seven opponents in a battle of wits that will have you building, combining, and levelling-up a crew in a battle of dominance for the city of White Spire. In this game, victory is determined not by twitch reflexes, but by superior tactics.[/perfectpullquote]
Valve has been running a Friends and Family Beta for a while now and has decided to open up Dota Underlords in a Battle Pass Preview type beta. In this beta, players will have access to the following:
- Play online against seven other players.
- Practice offline against our lineup of advanced bots (from easy to hardcore difficulty).
- Party up and play together against bots or other players.
For the open beta, which does not have a release date at the time of writing, Dota Underlords will be available for free without the need to purchase a Battle Pass and have the following additional features.
- Ranked matchmaking.
- Cross-play across all devices.
- Rank and progression shared across all devices.
Valve asks that those who participate in the beta give them feedback as they improve on the game. What do you think about Dota Underlords being available to Battle Pass owners only and will you be giving the game a shot? Let us know in the comment section below.
