How to Get the DOTA 2 Key

It has arrived… with great confusion and desperation for most Philippine online gamers. The reason for such mention is that it turned out DOTA 2, currently on beta stage, can only be played if you have been invited to play it. That is, you either have to have a DOTA 2 beta key obtained from privileged existing DOTA 2 beta account holders or you will have to be invited by Valve, the game publisher itself.  That sounds quite a pain and almost seems impossible for many online gamers in the Philippines. Luckily, recent developments made Valve realize that their strategy left their game miles behind their kin and number one competitor, League of Legends, that they finally loosen up their membership selection a bit and devised a workaround for online gamers to setup new DOTA 2 account and obtain their beta key.

Here’s a quick guide on how you can get your own account and DOTA 2 key for free.

How to get your DOTA 2 key in the Philippines

DOTA 2 runs on steam client so you will have to download and install it before you can play DOTA 2 Philippines. Head over to this link to download the Steam client. Click on the green link on top of the page that says “Install Steam”.

You will then be redirected to the Steam client download page. It will also show you the recommended system requirements for DOTA 2 (i.e. operating system, memory, CPU/processor speed, hard disk space and internet connection speed). Again, click the green button to download the game client.


Save the installer to your local drive then install.

After installing Steam, update your Steam client by clicking on “Check for Steam Client Updates…” This will allow you to fetch the latest DOTA 2 game client updates and latest patches.

Now it’s time to get your free DOTA 2 key. As I have said earlier, you will need to be invited in order to obtain a beta key. The easiest way is to take the DOTA survey so can be invited. To get the invite, head over to the DOTA 2 survey. The DOTA 2 survey screen look something like this:

The trick is to complete the survey as honestly as possible. The DOTA 2 survey questions are designed to know if your answers do not quite add up.


Now the hardest part comes in. You will have to wait for your invite. It will land down to the email address you provided on the survey. Mine took 3 days. Some went as long as a week. The invite usually contain 5 digits. Use it it to activate your DOTA 2 account and register your computer to the game.

Good luck!