Valve releases its first mobile game, Dota Underlords

Valve has launched its first mobile game, Dota Underlords. Releasing on iOS and Android – and with plans to eventually release on PC, Mac, and Linux, too – Dota Underlords pits the player 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”.

The game is the company’s own take on the fan-favourite Dota Auto Chess Dota 2 mod. Up until now, the game has only been available via a Friends and Family Beta, but it’s now been released to all Dota 2 Battle Pass subscribers for stress testing. Players can play with friends on AI bots, and practice strategies both on- and offline.

After “approximately a week of stress testing”, Valve said it will transition to an Open Beta which will make the game available to all for free on Android, iOS, and Steam. It’s expected that the Open Beta will also include ranked matchmaking, cross-play across all devices, and rank and progression shared across all devices.

“We’re sharing Dota Underlords fairly early in development,” Valve said via a recent blog update. “And while we intend to constantly be updating the game and adding features throughout the Beta Season, your feedback is critical to help the team know what issues are important to you. On the main screen, we’ve added a ‘Submit Feedback’ button to the game. Feel free to wear it out. Tell us what you love, and tell us what could be better. We welcome it all.”

Battle Pass owners will find a link to Dota Underlords on the Dota 2 dashboard in Steam.

Blizzard experienced an unprecedented backlash when it closed BlizzCon with the news that Diablo was coming to mobile. Almost 40,000 fans added their names to a petition calling on Blizzard to cancel the project, sending Activision-Blizzard’s shares tumbling.

However, at a post-announcement press conference Blizzard co-founder Allen Adham told fans: “Many of us over the last few years have shifted from playing primarily desktop to playing many hours on mobile, and we have many of our best developers now working on new mobile titles across all of our IPs. Some of them are with external partners like Diablo Immortal. Many of them are being developed internally only, and we’ll have information to share on those in the future.

“I will say also that we have more new products in development today at Blizzard than we’ve ever had in our history, and our future is very bright.”