Gabe Newell comes to Dota 2 in wonderfully deadpan voice pack

Gabe Newell has come to Dota 2 in the form of a new deadpan voice pack, with lines including: "Please email me at GabeN@valvesoftware.com and let me know about your rampage". It's truly excellent.

It's far funnier than I was expecting—the trailer above is basically a sketch showing Newell rehearsing the lines (and refusing to say the number three, for obvious reasons). I think my favourite is: "This is Gabe Newell. Thanks for playing Dota 2. Double Kill."

The voice pack is included in Dota 2's The International Battle Pass, which costs $10. 25% of all sales of the Battle Pass go straight into The International prize pool, which currently sits at a whopping $25 million. You can also pay to level up the Battle Pass if you want extra rewards,

If you just want to hear the voice lines, then YouTuber DotaBoyz has put together a video of them, which you can see below. Hat tip, Gamespot.

OpenAI's team of five self-teaching AI bots are set to take on a team of pros at this year's The International, with the first match of three kicking off today.

Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.