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The original was posted on /r/dota2 by /u/leviathan_13 on 2023-08-05 11:31:21.

Information is unclear and this is just my hot take, therefore it’s possible and probable that I got something wrong, but after the news that Valve is cracking down on Arcade’s monetization, I see many comments cheering that “finally, Valve is getting rid of P2W”. Why are you reducing the discussion to that? To me, that’s the same as cheering at an apartment complex catching fire because a guy you didn’t like lived there. What about the others then? That seems just a massive bad take, IMHO.

First of all, what makes you think that’s the issue? I don’t see any mention in Valve “message” that P2W was the issue, but it’s also understandable that they wouldn’t be clear about it in the first place. However, the actions they are taking are not targeting P2W specifically, are they? Therefore there is no reason to assume that P2W was an issue in the first place. I don’t like P2W as much as the other guy, but that’s why I don’t play those games. I saw custom games that were extensively P2W and just never played them again. If people like to play those, it has nothing to do with me and if you want to play them without the P2W aspects, then just make your own version of that. Apparently, it’s totally easy to do and maintain /s.

But let’s assume that P2W games somehow disappear, what about games that are not P2W? Because it seems to me that Valve is targeting monetization in general, not P2W. No custom games force you to pay to play, however if people want to support a specific game through monetization, especially if that game is F2P, why fellow players would suddenly argue that’s “wrong” and that custom games have to be free and not ask for any support? I mean, I can play a game that I don’t support without spending a cent and enjoy it for free. It seems to me that everybody wins here. Because it’s my understanding that the more work you want to put into a custom game and the more features you want to add, especially stuff that relies on third parties like data tracking and MMR, the more likely you will encounter costs, not to mention the inevitable cost of everything: time. It seems that most popular custom games in the arcade use monetization, therefore most arcade players enjoyed and maybe directly supported them too. If you remove the viability of that model, then you can expect that all custom games in the future will be “Dota 2 but”-like games that will become unsupported after a couple of patches. Don’t complain about it later then.

I understand, instead, Valve’s legal motivation that the workshop is supposed to be non-commercial and therefore I don’t blame them for enforcing their legal rights. I can blame them, however, for not doing it in the first place. If that was their stance, then they shouldn’t have given false expectations for years to players and devs alike of what the arcade could be.

And finally, let’s really be honest on the whole free-to-play and monetization thing: is Dota 2 pay-to-win? No, it’s free-to-play. Then let me also ask you: how much money have you dumped on this free-to-play game? (If you are curious about a rough estimate, go to your Steam profile --> Badges --> Dota 2 and click “How do I earn card drops?” in the top right) That’s right. So why would you, as a player, think that suddenly doing the same for a custom game is “wrong”? What the arcade probably really needs is a proper and official way to handle and regulate monetization, does it not? It seems that most devs would also support that, even with Valve getting a cut, so everybody would win, wouldn’t they? I can see that maybe it won’t be an easy thing to do, but surely they can explore other options before launching the nukes at least.

Sorry for the wall of text, this was just my hot take on the matter since I was sad to see many people getting toxic over stuff that they didn’t care about in the first place and cheering that other people’s fun would get ruined. And since that seems to be the popular stance, it probably also means RIP my karma -_-’