Valve today confirmed that it is developing a new game, but fans hoping for a new single-player experience from the company will be disappointed. The Dota 2 custom game (mod) that has garnered millions of fans and hundreds of thousands of concurrent players, Dota Auto Chess, is being built into a standalone title, developed in-house by Valve.
Although Valve has had discussions with the mod creators, Drodo Studio, on working together to build an Auto Chess game, ultimately the two parties had decided to build their own standalone versions while supporting each other.
As such, Drodo has been working on a mobile game based on Auto Chess, but updates to the Dota 2 mod will also continue according to the studio. Valve has also let the mod's players transfer over their progress over to the mobile version.
”We appreciate the great encouragements, support and help that Valve offered on Dota Auto Chess and Drodo’s standalone game," said the Drodo team. "Being a fan of Dota 2, we have great confidence in Valve’s new game, and expect the next world-class game."
Grabbing mods or their development teams and spinning up games out of them is not a new idea for Valve. DOTA 2, Counter-Strike, and Team Fortress series by the developer all spawned out of user modifications made to other games.
Valve will now be going all in on a "standalone Dota version" of Auto Chess, but exact details on this game will be shared at a later date. Hopefully, this venture will turn out to be better than what happened with another recent Dota 2 spin-off, Artifact.
