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Long read: The beauty and drama of video games and their clouds

"It's a little bit hard to work out without knowing the altitude of that dragon..."

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Access to Valve's Dota 2 now completely open

Dota, Dota want me?

Sign-ups are no longer required for Dota 2 and the queueing system has been removed.

Valve's confident that server upgrades and the new user experience can handle whatever stampede comes next. And that's on top of the 6.5 million people already playing each month.

Just log-in to Steam, find Dota 2 and press "Play Game" to start installing. Ho ho - that's as simple as your Dota 2 experience is going to get!

Dota 2 has stigma coming out of its ears. To people out of the loop, it's all professionals doing incomprehensible things they can never hope to understand.

Someone who does understand is Quintin Smith, who's love affair with Dota 2 resulted in our review in the summer.

"There's never been a better time to get involved than right now," he wrote, "with the New Player Experience and influx of fresh blood."

His best advice? "Just have fun."

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