Let’s face it, when it comes to games like League of Legends and StarCraft II some of the best players in the world reside in South Korea and Japan. In fact, there are entire television networks dedicated to spectating those games much in the same way that the US has channels dedicated to football or baseball. That’s why it’s been slightly strange to see that Dota 2 has not made an appearance in South Korea or Japan yet.
Luckily for our east Asian friends, that’s about to change. Valve and Nexon announced late last week that they have partnered up in order to bring Dota 2 to Korea and Japan. Nexon, if you don’t know, is considered a worldwide leader in free-to-play games that also helped bring about the use of microtransactions in games. Valve, as you may recall, took that concept of microtransactions to a whole new level by selling hats in Team Fortress 2.
It’ll be interesting to see if Dota 2 will be able to make a dent in the market. After all, League of Legends has been in that part of the world now for awhile, meaning that there’s likely to be some players who don’t want to have to learn the different timings and strategies of Dota 2. But, then again, with Dota 2 being free-to-play there’s likely going to be some players who will want to dominate the game in its early stages, so if I had to guess I would say that Dota 2 will do just fine in Korea and Japan. Why wouldn’t it?