I got a email from valve saying play Dota 2 Today. So clicked it and then clicked on it and they wanted 40$ for a free to play game so I could play it a few months early. Is this okay?

Not an e-mail from Valve. Scam mail.

Obviously not an email from valve.

Both of you are wrong.

http://www.dota2.com/store/itemdetails/57939587?appid=570&l=english

I assume it's okay, it's pretty much the same thing LoL and HoN did (although HoN wasn't F2P until later on)

It's not like, hey give us $40 to play it early and that's it, you get pretty much a "full game" experience without having to pay for additional heroes. It'll probably cut down on invite selling as well.

@WilltheMagicAsian: Oh man, I forgot about that. I'm so glad I got my invite before they started that.

@crazyleaves: They will be.

Oh wow. I was taking a gamble by guessing it wasn't legit. That was without the context that you also get a bunch of stuff you'd have to pay for otherwise, though. Not that I think it's worth it.

IF you don't have beta access yet, you can outright buy it. But when the game is finally released it will be free to play and all champions will be unlocked.

@Demyx: so it is just like your paying for early access and a few cosmetic items.

@gerp said:

@Demyx: so it is just like your paying for early access and a few cosmetic items.

Yes, you're essentially paying it forward for a bunch of hats and getting early access to the game as a bonus.

File Transfer Protocol?

@Demyx: so it is just like your paying for early access and a few cosmetic items.

I think it's kind of underhanded to sell access to a f2p game like that. $40 (even with all the other stuff it comes with) is what you pay for a game that you then own and can play forever. Now it's $40 to play for a couple months until you could play it for free anyway? This email that I got too is exactly what came to my mind when I read about Valve picking up that economist.

It's strange that they aren't selling it on Steam yet if they are collecting money for it.

Here in the UK you can pay £25 to get access to the beta.

The thing you have to understand is Dota is one of the biggest PC games in the world (huge asian and russian following). So many dota players have not got into the beta and will outright pay to get it since its basically the full game.

I got my beta key from the playdota forums, and all beta keys got 2 bonus ones to share, I got so many personal messages asking to trade the key for games like MW3 which were like £40 at the time.

Invites were being sold for $40 a piece outside of steam, so Valve basically just legitimized the process, and stopped handing out free money.

If you don't want to pay to play, then you can wait a bit and you'll get in in due process.

@The_Laughing_Man said:

@gerp said:

@Demyx: so it is just like your paying for early access and a few cosmetic items.

Im gonna guess you pay and get access to all heros instead of a rotating roaster.

All of the heroes are free. For everyone. The $40 dollar bundle is for people who want into the beta but haven't been able to get a key. They throw in a bunch of items as well.

http://blog.dota2.com/2012/06/introducing-the-dota-store/

I honestly thought this was a scam, just surprised how insensible this deal seems to be. I don't know, 40$ seems pretty steep for an early access to a F2P game, especially since we know all the heroes will be unlocked / free. If you absolutely can't wait, go ahead, but I'm not sure this'd be the best use of a 40$, DOTA enthusiast or not.

And shit, I thought every hardcore DOTA player got into the beta anyway, they seemed to be shitting those codes left and right at some point.

This is 2nd hand rumor mill stuff

I think I hear some were there were to man dudes coming to quickly for the severs to handle. So beta keys are being rolled out slower but if you want to help play for the new severs they are making they will let you in now.

My feeling about there payed beta key

In truth I don't thin there is not any thing wrong with this because you don't have to pay for it. Some people can't wait or have a bunch of friends playing or it is just easier for them to just pay for it so that's who this is for.

Aside from the fact that people have been selling invites for 60-70 out there and you get a bunch of cosmetic items to boot, we don't know how long dota2 is going to be in beta. There are still about 1/3 heroes unreleased so the game might not even come ou this year at the rate valve is goIng. To some people dota is all they need and if they can play it now instead of next year they'll definitely Pounce on it.

How do you even sell Dota 2 when you get it, it just shows up in your Steam library.

I totally thought this was open beta....

@gerp: People sell the actual Key, once you redeem the key then Dota 2 is in your inventory. So there was a ton of scamming going on where people were selling keys that were already used.

@jking47: It is semi open. They are sending keys out pretty regularly and now are selling the Early Access Bundle for $40. Due to server capacity, I wouldn't expect it to be open to the public until The International 2 which will be Aug 31st - Sept 2nd.

I signed up for that damn beta the hour it went up on their site and I still haven't gotten my invite. I think I might just buy early access at this point.

@thabigred said:

I signed up for that damn beta the hour it went up on their site and I still haven't gotten my invite. I think I might just buy early access at this point.

Did you try the playdota.com?

@Mr_Skeleton said:

@thabigred said:

I signed up for that damn beta the hour it went up on their site and I still haven't gotten my invite. I think I might just buy early access at this point.

Did you try the playdota.com?

No is there a way for me to access the beta through that site. I went there and don't see anything.

@thabigred said:

No is there a way for me to access the beta through that site. I went there and don't see anything.

You need to have an account created for Playdota before the announcement of the Dota 2 beta. The date was around September of 2011 I believe. At this point, just purchase the early access if you really want to play. Or if you can't afford it, you can subscribe to Youtube.com/dotainsight. That is a dota podcast I am apart of and we are running a contest there giving out beta keys and bottles of Rage Quit Relief to subscribers. Only have about 5 or 6 keys left I believe, but it is still worth a shot.

@IndieFinch: Alright I did all you said other than buying early access, if it doesn't work I'll just buy the access I guess.

There still letting people in to the beta I got in just last week.

scam email

@MrKlorox said:

File Transfer Protocol?

This. F2P = Free to play you buffoons.

That said, who the fuck hasn't been in the Dota 2 beta for months? My entire Steam list has been full of people since like six months ago.

Dust 514 is doing the same thing on PSN, altho i don't know how much of the actual finished content is in Dota2 compared to dust's one map and 2 game modes. Granted you do get a bunch of free items as well as some 30 day Xp booster.

@M_Shini said:

Dust 514 is doing the same thing on PSN, altho i don't know how much of the actual finished content is in Dota2 compared to dust's one map and 2 game modes. Granted you do get a bunch of free items as well as some 30 day Xp booster.

Well the game itself is pretty much done, the only thing they're really doing now is adding all the heroes from DotA on a (more or less) weekly basis. I'm guessing they have about 1/3 to 1/2 in atm.

@raiz265: They're about 3/4 finished with porting all of the heroes in WC3 Dota. 25/108 heroes aren't in the game yet, and they've actually been moving at a pretty good pace implementing them recently.

@Everyone considering buying into the beta: Don't get the $40 pass from the shop, the beta invite and the cosmetic items included with it aren't really worth the price. You can easily trade two Dota 2 chest keys ($2.50 each) for an invite through steam trade with no risk of being scammed, they're both steam inventory items. I believe there's a steam group set up for just this purpose, but it's also pretty damn easy to find someone at steamgameswap.reddit.com to make that trade. The only real reason that the beta isn't totally open at this point is the need for servers, they have to gate the influx of new players somehow so the existing servers don't get completely borked.

If you've never played WC3 Dota before, the only thing you'll really be missing in Dota 2 is a tutorial. You should probably do some reading to get yourself up to speed in the game, the best single article being "Welcome to Dota, You Suck." If you have played WC3 Dota before, you might be missing a favorite hero or game mode, but the game is otherwise pretty much complete.

@M_Shini: The Dust one bothers me a bit less, since there's enough in that bundle that makes the early beta access seem more like an extra. The Dota 2 seems a lot more like buying the beta itself, plus a couple cosmetics.

Which hey, if beta access is worth $40 to you, go ahead. Since I can play basically the exact same game (with more heroes even) minus the backend in WC3, I'd rather just do that. Or play LoL.

@MAGZine said:

Invites were being sold for $40 a piece outside of steam, so Valve basically just legitimized the process, and stopped handing out free money.

If you don't want to pay to play, then you can wait a bit and you'll get in in due process.

Valve can do no wrong guys.... Man fuck this! Paying for a beta invite. So only the hardcore will get this early get real good before anyone else. This whole game has really turned me against Valve, stealing a Blizzard property and putting 2 on the end and pretty much ripping off the setting and characters from the Blizzard game.

@Bourbon_Warrior said:

@MAGZine said:

Invites were being sold for $40 a piece outside of steam, so Valve basically just legitimized the process, and stopped handing out free money.

If you don't want to pay to play, then you can wait a bit and you'll get in in due process.

Valve can do no wrong guys.... Man fuck this! Paying for a beta invite. So only the hardcore will get this early get real good before anyone else. This whole game has really turned me against Valve, stealing a Blizzard property and putting 2 on the end and pretty much ripping off the setting and characters from the Blizzard game.

Do you realize how irrational you sound?

@Bourbon_Warrior said:

@MAGZine said:

Invites were being sold for $40 a piece outside of steam, so Valve basically just legitimized the process, and stopped handing out free money.

If you don't want to pay to play, then you can wait a bit and you'll get in in due process.

Valve can do no wrong guys.... Man fuck this! Paying for a beta invite. So only the hardcore will get this early get real good before anyone else. This whole game has really turned me against Valve, stealing a Blizzard property and putting 2 on the end and pretty much ripping off the setting and characters from the Blizzard game.

Uh that was already settled. This isn't a Blizzard property, Valve has done more in the past year for the Dota community then Blizzard did in a decade. If Blizzard really cared about Dota they would have worked with Icefrog back in 2004 or so when he took over from Gusinoo and Pendragon.

And Dota 2 is the exact same as Dota 1, so if you want to get "real good" just play some Dota 1.

No, you got a scam mail. They send out free beta keys periodically to people who signed up for them. HOWEVER, people who have ALREADY received their beta invitations are able to purchase MORE beta keys for $40 each in the in game store, so that we can bring our friends into the game early. Personally, I love the game, but Valve is doing such a horrible job at running it right now I wont even buy a chest key for 2 bucks, much less another invite for 40.

@Bourbon_Warrior said:

@MAGZine said:

Invites were being sold for $40 a piece outside of steam, so Valve basically just legitimized the process, and stopped handing out free money.

If you don't want to pay to play, then you can wait a bit and you'll get in in due process.

Valve can do no wrong guys.... Man fuck this! Paying for a beta invite. So only the hardcore will get this early get real good before anyone else. This whole game has really turned me against Valve, stealing a Blizzard property and putting 2 on the end and pretty much ripping off the setting and characters from the Blizzard game.

The game itself is fine, and its a genre dude. If you want to talk about ripping off the game, then technically League of Legends ripped off Dota, and Dota ripped off the SC AoS map. No, the problem is the community hands down. Valve just is not prepared for how naturally toxic the Dota community tends to be. Go read their development forums and you'll find about 15 different threads complaining about their LACK of blizzard names in the game, especially based around Lothar's.

@Grand said:

No, you got a scam mail. They send out free beta keys periodically to people who signed up for them. HOWEVER, people who have ALREADY received their beta invitations are able to purchase MORE beta keys for $40 each in the in game store, so that we can bring our friends into the game early. Personally, I love the game, but Valve is doing such a horrible job at running it right now I wont even buy a chest key for 2 bucks, much less another invite for 40.

Everyone has access to the Dota store. People who are not currently in the beta are able to go on there and purchase an invite. Thats the nice thing about the items right now, its there for the people who want them..but are easily ignored by those who don't. I have spent over 60$ at this point and planning on continuing to purchase stuff.

The beta keys are really easy to get now, so it's not worth complaining about.

@n968771: This thread was made almost a year ago, last post before you was made 9 months ago.