Video Games

Dota 2 devs call out Midas abuse in Kez trailer

New character coming alongside Crownfall Act IV

Marco Wutz

Valve

Valve has used the stage of The International, Dota 2’s annual competitive finals, to reveal the next playable hero character for the game: Kez. He’s a bird samurai whose looks may remind anime fans of Sunraku, the protagonist of well-received 2023 series Shangri-La Frontier.

Kez will join the line-up of playable heroes with the release of Crownfall Act IV, the next chapter of the ongoing narrative event players can experience in the game. In this story, Kez is the head of the Kazurai Order and leader of the flightless, who are resisting the antagonist, Queen Imperia.

There is currently no exact release date for Kez yet and Valve has not revealed any details on his gameplay mechanics just yet.

However, the developer included a fun little easter egg in the character’s reveal trailer, likely referring to a bug connected to an item called Hand of Midas that was widely exploited by parts of the player base some time ago and subsequently ruined many Dota 2 users’ days until Valve could get the issue under control.

The reference can be spotted at 00:45 in the trailer, where you can find the sentence “MIDAS IS AN ABOMINATION” carved into the brick wall on the left side of the big “KEZ” signature.

Crownfall is planned to get wrapped up in October 2024, giving us a rough idea of when we can expect to see Kez in the game, but of course Valve could always move the goalposts a little bit if it needs to.

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Marco Wutz
MARCO WUTZ

Marco Wutz is a writer from Parkstetten, Germany. He has a degree in Ancient History and a particular love for real-time and turn-based strategy games like StarCraft, Age of Empires, Total War, Age of Wonders, Crusader Kings, and Civilization as well as a soft spot for Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail. He began covering StarCraft 2 as a writer in 2011 for the largest German community around the game and hosted a live tournament on a stage at gamescom 2014 before he went on to work for Bonjwa, one of the country's biggest Twitch channels. He branched out to write in English in 2015 by joining tl.net, the global center of the StarCraft scene run by Team Liquid, which was nominated as the Best Coverage Website of the Year at the Esports Industry Awards in 2017. He worked as a translator on The Crusader Stands Watch, a biography in memory of Dennis "INTERNETHULK" Hawelka, and provided live coverage of many StarCraft 2 events on the social channels of tl.net as well as DreamHack, the world's largest gaming festival. From there, he transitioned into writing about the games industry in general after his graduation, joining GLHF, a content agency specializing in video games coverage for media partners across the globe, in 2021. He has also written for NGL.ONE, kicker, ComputerBild, USA Today's ForTheWin, The Sun, Men's Journal, and Parade. Email: marco.wutz@glhf.gg

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