The Steam workshop is quietly one of the best things in games. An easy way for artists to make and distribute high quality content for their favourite games – usually CS:GO and Dota 2 – while the best get paid. Unfortunately, according to a conglomerate of Dota 2 workshop artists, it’s getting to the point where it isn’t viable as a full time job due to a series of changes by Valve.
As for the game itself, here’s the best Dota 2 heroes for beginners.
In a lengthy post on the Dota 2 subreddit created by a group of artists, they explain how over the past couple of years their income has shrunk by six times due to various changes. This comes down to the way that profit is distributed from the various avenues items are sold in, including chests and battle passes.
Previously, everyone involved in one of Dota 2’s large events got a cut of everything (the massive majority still taken by Valve, of course). Now that’s no longer the case, the artists claiming that not a penny of the Battle Pass sales – Dota 2’s most successful cosmetics – reaching the artists whose items are used to sell it. Instead they only get money from chests, which are not bought anywhere near as frequently.
“Artists have increasingly been giving up on the Dota Workshop over the past six months,” they say. “Everyone has been reluctant to speak publicly about what’s going on. A fear of the consequences of speaking out has been a very real thing. The Dota 2 team has, over the past year, become increasingly faceless, unresponsive and impossible to communicate with. We’ve tried continuously to reach out to the Dota 2 team, Gabe Newell and Erik Johnson about these concerns over the past six months, but we have received no response.”
They also mention that no such issues are present with the CS:GO workshop, and that “those artists have typically always earned more than Dota’s.”
They describe a recent call to arms to artists for items for the upcoming International Collector’s Cache as a “final breaking point” that means “those of us who manage to get something in it may be able to continue doing this through the year into a further uncertain future. Those of us who don’t are going to have to call it quits.”
If you don’t wish to read the whole thing, this helpful TLDR from the top comment gets the gist of their claims across:
We’ve reached out to Valve and will update if they have any comment.