Dota Underlords and the autobattler genre is struggling to keep players

Few realised at the time, but last January we witnessed the birth of a genre. Dota Auto Chess shot to the top of Dota 2’s custom games, enticing MOBA players with wizarding army management. The big names took notice. By June we had Riot’s Teamfight Tactics and Valve’s Dota Underlords, squaring off against each other. An unknown number of millions flocked to TFT, while Dunderlords hit 200,000 peak concurrent players.

Six months later, Teamfight Tactics seems relatively stable, while Dota Underlords is dropping fast. We normally don’t pay player numbers much heed, but given autobattlers were last year’s big new genre and Dota and League Of Legends are both long-term titans, it’s hard not to ask the question: how come?

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