2025 is proving to be a tough year for Dota 2, especially when it comes to the player count relative to just one year ago in 2024.
The popularity of Dota 2 has had many ups and downs over the last 14 years of the game’s existence, but the downs are much more frequent and last much longer than they used to. That’s technically been the case for years as the game has slowly bled players, but 2024 has seen the modest player count gains of 2025 completely evaporate.
So what actually happened to cause this reversal of fortune? And is there any hope of a comeback for Dota 2’s player count? Here’s where things stand, where they may go next, and why.
Dota 2’s average player count is showing steep year-over-year drops in 2025 compared to what was a relatively robust 2024 for the long-running game.
While there were modest gains at the start of the year, things have plunged downwards since then. Here’s a month-by-month breakdown of Dota 2’s average player count in 2024 relative to 2025, per Steam Charts:
| Month | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| January | 440,229.4 | 446,491.2 |
| February | 427,922.4 | 431,748.7 |
| March | 428,918.5 | 402,851.2 |
| April | 456,550.8 | 393,173.2 |
| May | 512,919.2 | 408,987.7 |
| June | 486,674.3 | 411,123.3 |
| July | 475,393.7 | 426,672.7 |
| August | 449,798.1 | – |
| September | 426,811.7 | – |
| October | 410,681.5 | – |
| November | 454,956.2 | – |
| December | 437,635.7 | – |
Central to the change, and the likely explanation for the difference in player count, is the Crownfall event. Crownfall ran from April 2024 through February 2025, offering players the opportunity to earn a broad variety of items including precious and potentially expensive Arcana skins. These were offered on something akin to a battle pass system structured around Dota 2’s standard “cavern crawl” adventures. Cavern crawls task players with winning games using specific heroes and achieving miscellaneous tasks in order to earn rewards.
The end of Crownfall resulted in a steep decline in Dota 2’s player count, including a dip of roughly 20% from May 2024 to May 2025. Crownfall also likely explains the year-over-year gains seen in January and February 2025.
All that said, the explanation isn’t just a matter of Crownfall ending. The bigger discussion is the lack of anything taking the place of Crownfall in Dota 2 after the event ended.
Valve has significantly dialed back its support for Dota 2 in recent years, though the developer continues to keep the game running with updates, items, and occasional events. The biggest example of this was the end of The International Battle Pass. Valve nixed the TI Battle Pass ahead of The International 2023, something that removed a majority of the money paid out to esports competitors in Dota 2 and brought an end to one of the biggest in-game events that kept Dota 2 players coming back to the game each year.
The company’s explanation was that the size and scope of the TI Battle Pass had absorbed all development efforts for the game each year. By removing the battle pass, this would afford more opportunity to create a greater number of smaller-scale events.
Image credit: Valve
The trouble for Dota 2 fans is that this never really happened, and the player count has measurably suffered for it. Crownfall is effectively the only significant event that has been rolled out since the TI Battle Pass was removed from the game’s annual calendar. And despite being the only Dota 2 event of 2024, it was still plagued by delays that saw even casual players clear out event content and wait for weeks for a new chapter to play.
More than six months removed from Crownfall’s end, Valve has given Dota 2 players little reason to return to the game since. There have still been notable patches, including Dota 2’s 2025 spring update and the Wandering Waters Update, but nothing really encouraging players to come back. Even Quartero’s Curios, which kicked off on August 5, offers very limited rewards.
Early signs are that this latest update will deliver a modest bump to Dota 2’s 2025 player count despite being very limited in scope. Whether the game can sustain that bump, or even hit the numbers seen in 2024, remains to be seen. But it’s unlikely to happen if Valve continues to refuse to fill the calendar with events attractive enough to keep Dota 2 players flocking back to the game.
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