Valve’s new bug-fix patch is so big it may as well be its own game

You know a game is pretty buggy when it needs a 5.5GB patch to fix everything… a day after its release. Now, to be fair, the game in question is still in beta, but 5.5GB is bigger than most expansion packs. Either way, you really have to admire Valve’s commitment to keeping Dota 2 Reborn, which the company released to the public on Thursday, as bug-free as possible. 

The beta’s been out for one day, but that’s long enough for the playerbase to spot a number of rather problematic bugs in Dota 2 Reborn, and for Valve to hurl out their max-level Wild Axes of Bugfixing. And a 5.5GB update. Bugger me. None of the bugs are particularly hilarious, but a fair few of them aren’t particularly esoteric or dependent on weird, ultra-specific conditions. “Fixed illusions being able to manipulate and sell items”, for instance. “Fixed a crash when dire or radiant ancients are destroyed” is also probably something they want to get sorted before The International 2015 kicks off, so it’s a good thing they worked out whatever was triggering that one. Okay, fine, some of them are quite funny. “Fixed Huskar causing significant framerate loss”, for instance. I’d have gone with “Fixed Life Break being castable on enemy players’ computers”, but oh well. Dota 2 Reborn is Valve’s attempt to shunt Dota 2 back in beta, having gotten bored with actually releasing a game. It updates everything into Source 2 with 64-bit and DX11 support, rejigs the interface, makes things friendlier for newbies, adds all sorts of new metrics like Hero MMR, hurls in Custom Games, and does a bunch of other things too numerous to list here.