Why?ĭespite the growing popularity of Dota 2, there are still many people on the outside who peer in on those multiplayer matches and just don't understand what they're seeing. More users play Dota 2 simultaneously than the nine other ranked games combined and it is only going up from there. For Valve’s Dota 2, now just wrapping its beta period, that figure currently sits at 500,000 concurrent users (not including China and South Korea).
Games like Counter-Strike, Team Fortress 2 and Sid Meier’s Civilization V have earned accolades, snared players in their thousands, and then hovered around the 50,000 mark. Since Steam’s inception, just a handful of marvellous gems have topped the Steam Stats page. This is the first part in a new series looking at contemporary multiplayer gaming and the e-sports phenomenon.
