Free to Play, Valve’s new documentary about the e-Sports community around Valve’s free-to-play MOBA DOTA 2, is now available to be viewed for free on Steam and Youtube. Over 600,000 people pre-loaded the title on Steam before the movie’s premiere on March 19th. As the movie went live Valve also held a live premiere event in California. The premiere was streamed on Twitch and was followed by a Q&A session featuring the filmmakers and two of the subjects of the documentary. The Q&A session is still available on Twitch.
The documentary follows three competitors at the first DOTA 2 International Tournament as they competed for the million-dollar prize. Two of the three competitors featured in the documentary, Dendi and Fear, were in attendance at the premiere for the Q&A session.
Free to Play is yet another example of Valve’s continuing interest in building the e-Sports community and the e-Sports community surrounding their own multiplayer titles, putting millions of dollars in resources and manpower into turning competitive gaming into an accessible spectator sport.
While Valve isn’t charging for the documentary—unless you purchase it through iTunes, in which case it’s $4.99 for the SD version and $9.99 for the HD version—they are monetizing it in other ways, primarily by selling a DLC pack for DOTA 2 themed around the competitors and the documentary. The DLC offers new skins for the subjects’ preferred heroes, a HUD based on the film, and camera-themed skins for wards and the courier.
