To Dota 2, with love!

We write about Dota 2 every single day. The drafts. The upsets. The Aegis lifts and the tragic collapses. But somewhere between the deadlines and the stats, we realised something: we never wrote about why it matters to us.

Our editors put down the notebooks, stepped away from the spreadsheets, and wrote from somewhere deeper. Somewhere that doesn't fit into a headline.

Dear Dota 2,

You changed my life. Completely.

You showed me what passion really looks like, and you convinced me to turn my life upside down.

Thirteen years since we first met, I have 20,000 hours on your servers. That's every late night chasing one more game. That’s every article I wrote. That’s every player I interviewed.

I have watched teenagers become champions and champions become memories. I have watched rosters explode at 3 AM on Twitter X. I have watched a man named Notail lift two Aegises after everyone told him he was finished. I have watched a stadium in Shanghai scream KuroKy's name and felt every decibel.

You are the most beautiful thing I have ever hated.

You are demanding. You are cruel. You ask for everything and promise nothing in return.

Other games will come and go. Other esports will rise, peak, and fade. But you? You'll still be here. Demanding. Cruel. Beautiful. Waiting for the next person willing to have their life changed. Completely.

I don't play as much anymore. Life changed. The reflexes aren't where they were.

But I still watch. I still write. I still believe. I still love you.

Here's to you, Dota 2,

The most difficult relationship of my life. And the one I will never leave.

Forever yours,

Andreea “div” Esanu

Dota 2 is not an easy game to love. It is stubborn, chaotic, occasionally cruel, and fully capable of ruining an otherwise peaceful evening in under an hour. And yet, somehow, I never really can leave. Even when I step back, even when I tell myself I am done, it has a way of circling back into my life through the roar of a crowd, a last-second throne defense, a roster move that rewrites the balance of the world overnight. More than ten years later, I am still here, not because Dota is easy to love, but because it never stops changing, never stops challenging, never stops daring the people who follow it to believe in something impossible one more time.

I have watched players grow up inside, retire, and then—like clockwork—return again, proving that in the world of Dota “goodbye” rarely means forever. I have watched entire regions rise, collapse, and rebuild themselves, stories unfold that no scriptwriter would dare pitch because they would sound too unbelievable. And through it all, it remains unpredictable, demanding, sometimes exhausting, but always alive in a way no other game quite manages to be. Dota has always been messy, unpredictable, and gloriously human, a battlefield where frustration and brilliance live side by side. And somehow, through all the chaos, it remains the one game that never stops feeling alive - Cristy "Pandora" Ramadani

• Read also: To Counter-Strike, with love!

Dear Dota,

It has been many (MANY) years since we first met. Back then, in 2003, I was a young, starry-eyed Warcraft player, introduced into a new world. You made high school bearable, as I spent hours learning how to pronounce Aegis and Shukuchi while never doing my homework, all for more time with you.

Then, in 2013, everything changed. Your heir took the reins, and reigned supreme it has. From playing for thousands of hours, to writing countless articles, watching and attending events, and meeting many of the best players, my heart has only grown.

I watched you grow like Tiny, stomping on my heart at times like Centaur, but you never left my side. Even at the worst of times, I came sprinting back to you.

Now, we sit here, and I still look at you the way I did all those years ago, but everything has changed. I’m not the person I was then, and you don’t get much of my time anymore.

But I still love you.

Yours sincerely,

Your favourite Warlock mid-laner,

Jarrad “Belandrial” Adams