Valve outlines custom games in Dota 2 Reborn update

Last week Valve announced Dota 2 Reborn, an update to Dota 2 that will include a new engine and interface. It also mentioned custom games, and today Valve provided a look at exactly how custom games will work. From their post:

"Custom Games are new experiences that are created by the community, and playable within Dota 2. These games can be anything from a grand brawl between ten Invokers, to a story-driven dungeon adventure, to something creative that no one has seen before. For us, Custom Games represent a continuation of the tradition that gave birth to Dota, Team Fortress and Counter-Strike. We'd like to build an ecosystem where you can experience something new every time you launch Dota 2."

Developer tools will be provided for players to build and edit their own levels, materials, models, and effects, and Lua scripting will allow authors to create their own events. Valve has embedded a video tour of the developer tools on their update page, and will be releasing example content to help authors learn to create their custom games.

Later in the week we'll hear news of the new engine and details about the open beta.

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Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.