Dota 2 is Free To Play But???

Dota, If not the most popular game in the Philippines is probably the most played game in Computer shops today. And with Dota 2 just around the corner preparing for it's grand release it's relieving to know that the game will be FREE-TO-PLAY (F2P). We've been hearing news about the game hinting us that it will most likely go into F2P route but just for the sake of formality from Valve, they announced it on their official site that Dota 2 is indeed F2P.

The question now is how will Valve going to monetize the game? Well the obvious approach is for them to provide Items that will aid the players to win games but yesterday they just announced that they'll be offering a DOTA 2 Store but will not be selling items to help players win the game. Instead, the items that they'll be vending are for players to have a different look and just aesthetic skins for heroes to be more appealing.

If this will be the case, then it will be much better than League of Legends or Heroes of New Earth. Still, I'm quite skeptical for this kind of offer - If they'll just provide some skins then how will they profit from the game? I'm quite sure that the money that they'll get from selling online is not enough to cover the expense in operating and developing the game.

Let's leave that question for today and check out on how the monetization part will evolve in the future. It's doesn't sound convincing on the business side of things - unless Valve is too generous for this then it's great news for all of us.