Love it or hate it, you have to give props to Dota 2, since 2013 this inspired game has grown to dominate a significant portion of the gaming market, with up to 43 million unique players a month, netting Valve up to $18,000,000 per month! It’s also the third most watched Esports game in the world, and yet, it’s a free to-play-game…with microtransactions, but only cosmetics, thankfully.

With all this success, it’s a wonder that Valve doesn’t make a bigger fuss over this genre defining title, however, to celebrate the lunar new year (yeah, I have no idea), Valve have announced the Dark Moon special event. This is an event that runs from January 26th until February 6th (next Monday). It is essentially a mini game along the lines of Dawn of War 2’s Last Stand, except with tower defense elements, and mid-game upgrades.

Although the characters and abilities are essentially the same, it’s clear that Dark Moon is a different beast to the default Dota 2 experience, games are cooperative rather than competitive, and very different tactics are needed to beat down the creeps right up to the last level.

Dark Moon may be a short lived mini game but it’s free, and looks fun, I say give it a blast, who knows? Valve may make it permanent if it becomes popular enough, stranger things have happened.