Dota 2 News

A huge new Dota 2 patch U-turns on one of Valve's biggest additions in years

As is tradition, Valve has just unleashed one of its biggest Dota 2 updates in a while right on the cusp of a major tournament climax. With the group stages of ESL One Birmingham 2026 drawing to a close today, and the playoffs running this weekend, the developer has dropped the fittingly massive Dota 2 patch 7.41 right on our heads. The removal of Facets, a dramatic overhaul to Innate abilities, new hero spells, more items, extra siege creeps, and map changes abound. This is a big one, so let's take a look at the main talking points.

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7.41 Gameplay Patch

[p]Patch 7.41 is out now and you can check out the patch notes here.

In addition, we've made the following improvements and bug fixes:
[/p]

[p] Added an overhead indicator when a consumable item is being used on an ally or given to one within 1200 units (e.g., Tango)[/p]
[p] Added an option in Settings to show your hero's current vision while holding the 'Select Hero' hotkey, amended by Fog of War[/p]
[p] Item recipe components are now consistently ordered from most expensive to least expensive to make Quick Buy more predictable (exceptions include boots, Blink Dagger, and a few others)[/p]
[p] Fixed certain on hit effects not working consistently after there were more than 256 projectiles in flight at the same time[/p]
[p] Fixed certain scenarios under which a player's Observer and Sentry wards were replaced with an error model [/p]
[p] Trying to craft a Neutral Item while your inventory is full and your Neutral Item Slot is occupied with an innate item (e.g. Witch Doctor's Gris Gris) will now fail instead of automatically consuming the item[/p]
[p] Fixed Neutral Crafting hotkeys overriding regular hotkeys if you clicked on the neutral crafting button of a hero you could not control[/p]
[p] Ability Draft:[/p]
- [p] All heroes now have their innate ability when drafted [/p]
- [p] Updated ability pool to match the added/removed abilities for 7.41[/p]
- [p] Fixed Lone Druid's Spirit Bear not spawning after some time[/p]
- [p] Fixed Rearm not granting Keen Conveyance[/p]
- [p] Fixed Techies' Reactive Tazer not working with Largo's Aghanim's Shard[/p]
[p]Deprecated support for GPUs that do not support DirectX 11/SM5. Upcoming graphics features and performance improvements require DX11/SM5, and a future update will remove support for older devices. (99.96% of active players have DX11/SM5-capable devices.) [/p]

"Valve does not cooperate with gambling sites" - Counter-Strike publishers issue rare public defence of lootbox mechanics, following New York lawsuit

In an unusual show of candour, Valve have spoken out publicly against a lawsuit filed in New York, USA that accuses them of "letting children and adults alike illegally gamble" via loot boxes in Counter-Strike 2, Dota 2, and Team Fortress 2.

With the caveat that I am no Atticus Finch-esque legal expert or even a Louis Tully-grade bumbler, I find Valve's rebuttal to be a mixture of whataboutery and tactical mitigation, with a couple of fair points. It basically sidesteps what I think is the lawsuit's most important argument – that lootbox mechanics are fundamentally manipulative. You can read the thing in full here, or you can read my slapdash summary-with-notes, below.

Tis the season for taking Steam to court, apparently. A new class action lawsuit has been filed in Washington, USA accusing Valve of running an unlawful gambling operation through lootbox mechanics in Counter-Strike 2, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Dota 2, and Team Fortress 2.

A lawsuit filed by New York Attorney General Letitia James accuses Valve of "illegally promoting gambling through videogames popular with children and teenagers." The developer behind Steam has long featured loot boxes in games including Counter-Strike 2, Dota 2, and Team Fortress 2, which offer a selection of typically cosmetic rewards that use a random roll to determine the prize awarded from a list when they are opened. The Office of the Attorney General alleges, "Valve has made billions of dollars luring its users, many of whom are teenagers or younger, to engage in gambling in the hopes of winning expensive virtual items that they can cash in on."