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Dota Auto Chess is a strategy video game developed by Drodo Studio as a custom game mode within Valve Corporation's 2013 MOBA game Dota 2. The game features up to eight players playing a modified version of chess, mixed with numerous characters and gameplay rules from Dota 2. Dota Auto Chess had over eight million unique players by May 2019. Drodo Studio released a standalone mobile version in April 2019. An upcoming standalone PC version is set to be released by Valve.

Gameplay
The game combines strategy with chess-like gameplay and Dota 2 elements, and supports up to 8 players.

The game divides the 8 players participating in the game on 8 different chessboards. Players grab different chess pieces in the chess pool before each round. They then pick and match different chess pieces, placing them on the board according to their chosen strategy. The round then starts, with the player's pieces playing out the turn automatically against the formation chosen by the other players. Players accumulate gold, buy chess pieces before each round and try to strengthen their own combination to win.

Each player controls a courier with a full health bar, a zero-mana bar and a level one zero-experience bar at the beginning. In each round, if players lose the chess battle, their health bar will decrease some amount, which depends on how many enemy chess pieces remain standing on the field. When the health bar of the courier is depleted, that courier's controller loses the game. The mana bar represents the player's gold inventory and is always equal to the player's gold amount, which cannot be more than 100. After the end of each round, the courier's mana increases regardless of whether the player won the battle in that round. Players can use gold to buy new chess pieces, strengthening their chess teams. There is also an experience bar which represents the experience and the level of courier. The level of the courier defines how many chess pieces can be set on the field. The level always equals the maximum number of chess pieces that can be used in a battle. At the beginning of the game, the player’s level is one, and the player can only set one chess piece on the battle field. The maximum level is 10; a single player cannot set more than ten chess pieces on the battle field. After the end of each round, the courier's experience will increase by one. Each level has different experience requirements. Higher levels require more experience. Players can also spend gold to increase the experience of their courier to set more chess pieces in the battle to win. As time goes by, each player's health bar decreases. The game ends when one player remains.

Chess Pieces
There are more than fifty different chess pieces in the chess pool available in the game. The developer of the game updates the chess pieces irregularly, including adding new chess pieces, removing undesired chess pieces from the chess pool and adjusting the original chess pieces to maintain the game balance. In late March 2019, the developer added a new race to the game. In this upgrade, two new chess pieces were added to the pool.

All the players share a public chess pool. Chess pieces with same cost share the same pool. The cost of chess pieces ranges from one to five. Chess piece power scales with cost. Players cannot usually roll a high cost chess pieces at the beginning. As the couriers’ level increase, the probability of rolling high cost chess pieces increases and that of rolling low cost chess pieces decreases.

Each chess piece belongs to a particular race and class. Each chess piece has its own ability. The combinations of a particular number of different chess pieces with same race or with same class will have different effects. Players buy the chess pieces from a given selection list in each round and create their own combo. After setting chess pieces on the field, players cannot control the chess pieces; they will attack opponents automatically. As the courier level increases, players have better chances to roll powerful chess pieces and can set more chess pieces in the battle, enabling better combinations.

All chess pieces have 3 upgrade levels. Each chess piece starts at level one. Generally, players can upgrade pieces by setting three of the same chess pieces together. Merged pieces are more powerful than their normal counterparts.

In some rounds, players battle against creeps instead of other players. Players may acquire items after killing the creeps and can give these items to their chess pieces. Each item has unique effects and some can be combined to form stronger versions. The names of the items dropped from creeps are as same as those in Dota 2, but the effects of the items are different.

Rank System
Auto Chess has its own ranking system. After the end of a game, the rank of players who lose the game early will decrease, and the rank of players who lose late and the victor will increase. There are five ranks in the game, including Queen, King, Rook, Bishop, Knight and Pawn, while Queen is the highest rank and Pawn is the basic rank. There are one to nine steps in Pawn, Knight, Bishop and Rook ranks. Once players reach the highest step, their rank will increase. The King rank only has one step. When players reach the Queen rank, the global digital a number ranking is available for the top 10 thousand. At the end of April 2019, the developer added a season system. After the end of a season, higher rank players achieve better rewards and the rank will reset.

Candy System
All players have a basic courier at the beginning. After each game, players in the top rank are awarded candies. Each player can achieve no more than 10 candies per day. Players with Custom Pass can achieve 5 more candies per day. Players can spend 40 candies to roll a new courier or spend hundreds of candies to add a cosmetic effect on their couriers. Couriers have different rarities. The rare couriers are usually bigger and more appealing than normal ones. Some couriers can combine to form new couriers that cannot be bought directly. Beside earning candies in game, players can pay for candies. In January, 2019, players could scan QR codes in the game to pay for candies from a third party store. Drodo Studio later disabled candy codes (maybe because of legal issues ), but candies are still available from some third party sellers out of the game.

Development
Dota Auto Chess was released as a custom map and game mode for Data 2 by Chinese developer Drodo Studio to great enthusiasm. The popularity of Auto Chess convinced Drodo Studio and Dota 2 developer Valve Corporation to create a stand-alone version of the game. In addition, on March 15, 2019, Drodo Studio announced that it had partnered with Chinese production company Imba TV and Long Mobile to produce an independent Auto Chess mobile game. The Auto Chess mobile game is a stand-alone non-Dota version of the game. Dota Atuo Chess mod players can migrate their account to the mobile version and get rewards the Auto Chess mobile game. The migration process is supported by Valve Corporation. On April 18, 2019, the Auto Chess mobile unlimited beta first released on Android and on May 22, 2019, the IOS version of the beta was available. On May 30, 2019, Drodo Studio moved the app to a live version, and the game changed its name from "Auto Chess" to "Drodo Auto Chess".

On May 21, 2019, the game publisher and platform company Valve Corporation posted an announcement on its Dota 2 blog, that it is developing its own standalone Dota Auto Chess game. According to the announcement, Valve and Drodo Studio discussed cooperation in February and came to the conclusion that they could not work together directly. However, they agreed that each company would build its own standalone version of the game and support the other going forward. Valve stated that “we had conversations, but we both came to the conclusion that Valve and Drodo could not work directly with each other for a variety of reasons. We ended up agreeing that we’ll build our own stand-alone version of the game and support each other to the fullest.” On June 1, 2019, Valve Corporation updated a monthly paid 'Auto Chess Pass' in Dota's in-game shop, which is a share of the revenue to Drodo Studio.

From February 27 to March 3, 2019, Drodo Studio and Imba TV hosted the first year Dota Auto Chess tournament. Drodo Studio stated that besides the development of Auto Chess mobile, they would continue to upgrade the Dota 2 version of Auto Chess. Drodo Studio stated that a Chinese production company would support them in building esports tournaments and the esports tournaments would be in both Auto Chess mobile and Dota Auto Chess on PC.

Source of Inspiration
In an exclusive interview, when asked about the inspiration of Dota Auto Chess, Drodo Studio stated that they used Mahjong for reference. While drawing inspiration from Mahjong, Dota Auto Chess made changes to accommodate the battle-oriented gameplay.

Mahjong is a card game originating in China. The game is usually played by four people. The rules of Mahjong in different regions (especially the scoring method) are very different, but the basic aim is to spell out a particular combination of cards through a series of replacement and trade-off rules while preventing opponents from achieving their own combinations. The game focuses on technique, strategy and calculation, but it also involves quite a bit of luck.

Dota Auto Chess and Mahjong are therefore similar. Both games draw pieces from a pool, and several players may pursue one particular chess piece at the same time. If someone else gets it, it means that the probability of getting that piece is reduced.

Reception
Several publications praised Dota Auto Chess for its creative gameplay rules accessibility. VPEsports noted that Dota Auto Chess feels like a very strategic game: "It’s a strategy game, with a feeling of a turn-based game, it has the key ingredients of card games and it requires the player to plan ahead while being rather good with APM." Gameinformer offered the praise that "It's not chess, and it's not Dota, but it's a great game to queue up and play with friends or solo." The game's fans include a wide rage of players, such as professional Dota 2 players (who often play a few matches between games to relieve stress,) and players who have never played Dota 2 at all. "It takes a few games to start to understand how everything works, but its got some really fun strategy hooks underneath everything." PCGgamesN called Dota Auto Chess "the most successful third party Dota custom game ever".

The game hit its 4 million subscribe r milestone on February 16, 2019, 5 million milestone on February 27, 2019, and 6 million milestone on March 12, 2019. By May 2019, more than 8.5 million people subscribed to the game, with more than 300,000 concurrent players daily.

Several publications pointed out there were still room for improvement of the game. Vpesports noted that some bugs in the games needed to be fixed. There is also concern of the future of the Dota Auto Chess after Valve Corporation and Drodo Studio ended the cooperation. VentureBeat tested the Drodo Auto Chess mobile and noted players who hadn't played Dota Auto Chess on PC might feel confused of figuring out the the information of the unit on the field by saying "Drodo’s mobile Auto Chess is a significantly better way to play the original great mod if you already know and comprehend the original game, and for that, it should be a success. But it feels like a perhaps smaller-scale version of Auto Chess, one designed around the small screen both visually and as a game, might be the one to take over the world like previous mods have."

Drodo Studio faced intellectual property theft from other companies in China. A trademark registration report showed that 8 companies registered the "Auto Chess" trademark in January 2019. Esportsobserver noted that "on Jan. 29, a mobile version of Dota Auto Chess named “Sanjie Auto Chess” appeared on Taptap (like the Gaming App Store in China) and the App Store, but was quickly removed." VentureBeat stated that due to the popularity and free-to-play of the Dota Auto Chess, "so another studio could capture away some of that momentum by releasing a standalone imitation on other platforms."

Dota Auto Chess is often compared favorably with Artifact. Both games are published by Valve, both are card games with characters drawn from Dota 2, and the release dates of the two games are close. However, Auto Chess has proven to be the more enduring game.