ATF on Valve closing pro pubs data in Dota 2: "I need a manager to sell replays"
2025-03-20 09:42:00Team Falcons offlaner Ammar "ATF" Al-Assaf reacted to the latest Dota 2 patch, which closed access to Immortal Draft replays and APIs. He joked that he would start selling demos of his pubs. He came up with this idea while talking to Bryle in-game, the screenshot of the conversation was posted on Reddit.
Actually, it's a smart idea, Bryle. I need a manager to sell my replays. Every hero [will have a] different price. Bristleback — 2k dollars.
On March 19, Valve made massive changes to Immortal Draft games. They can only be viewed live, all other forms of access are banned. This was presumably done to let players experiment with their strategies and builds without relying on smurfs. It severely restricts data gathering in this area by services like Dota2ProTracker, Dotabuff, or Spectral Stats.
Casual players, who like to copy professional builds, will have to rely on reviews of professional matches or future content makers who will cover this gap. It's unclear how the change will affect the professional scene aside from more work for team analysts. The top-tier players will still have a lot of reviews at their disposal, but it will be a bit harder to copy someone's playstyle or build.
