How to access Dota Underlords’ closed beta

The autobattler genre has seen its third competitor enter the fray. After watching an arcade game mode’s player base far outstrip the game whose assets it used and relied on, Valve has tossed its own game, Dota Underlords, onto the open market. The Dota 2 developer now has to fight Drodo’s game as well as Riot Games’ Teamfight Tactics, a playable game mode in League of Legends.

With the sudden surge of autobattler games following the rampant success of Drodo Studios’ original auto chess game, Valve has had to quickly develop its own version to ride the wave of interest. Dota Underlords has been in development since February and has already undergone a friends and family beta to test it out and make use of some early feedback. But this week, it’ll head to closed beta before moving into open beta.

If you want to get into the closed beta in the week before it hits open beta, all you need to do is own a Battle Pass for this year’s International. The Battle Pass is a conglomeration of in-game content designed to promote interest in The International, as well as offer exciting new content to players. As the primary source of income for The International’s record-breaking prize pools, 25 percent of the proceeds from the Battle Pass go directly into the tournament.

What you’ll be able to do is relatively basic, but it should allow players to gauge the strength of Valve’s new game and determine whether it’ll be more popular than Artifact. You’ll be able to play against seven other players or offline against bots of varying difficulty, as well as party with friends for some heavier team play.

Open beta, however, is where it’ll get busier because ranked matchmaking and crossplay will be enabled on all devices. Ranks and progression will also be saved, so there’s no need to have two separate accounts on different platforms. The game will be coming to PC, Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS, which means it can be played anywhere. Similar to how battle royale surged into popularity and spawned a whole host of games, this may be the beginning of the rise of the autobattler.

You can purchase one of three different Battle Pass options from The International’s official website to gain access to the Dota Underlords closed beta.