Valve is making a standalone version of Dota Auto Chess

Valve has announced it will create a standalone version of Dota Auto Chess, an astoundingly popular custom game mode for Dota 2 developed by Chinese studio Drodo Studio.

"In February we flew the Drodo team over from China to chat about the future of Dota Auto Chess, and to see if they’d want to collaborate directly with us," the announcement reads.

"We had great conversations, but we both came to the conclusion that Valve and Drodo could not work directly with each other for a variety of reasons. We ended up agreeing that we’ll each build our own stand-alone version of the game, and support each other to the fullest."

Drodo has been developing a standalone, non-Dota mobile version for some time, and Valve will help the studio migrate DAC mod account progress over to the mobile version. As for Valve's Dota version of Auto Chess, we should expect more information about that "soon".

Philippa described Dota Auto Chess as "the joyful deck-based Dota 2 game that Artifact isn't" when she wrote it up in February. Indeed, if its success is anything like Dota 2—itself based on a Warcraft mod—then it'll easily leave Artifact in its dust.

Shaun Prescott is the Australian editor of PC Gamer. With over ten years experience covering the games industry, his work has appeared on GamesRadar+, TechRadar, The Guardian, PLAY Magazine, the Sydney Morning Herald, and more. Specific interests include indie games, obscure Metroidvanias, speedrunning, experimental games and FPSs. He thinks Lulu by Metallica and Lou Reed is an all-time classic that will receive its due critical reappraisal one day.