In context: Valve announced this week that in the near future, it will begin removing Dota 2's support for older Windows and Mac systems as well as older graphics APIs in order to streamline development. This should affect a very small percentage of players even though Dota 2 is designed to be compatible with a wide range of PCs.

Towards the end of a blog post, Valve said the changes will be coming over the course of months. Eventually it will remove support for 32-bit Windows and macOS versions below 10.14. Dota 2 will also eventually only support DirectX 11 and Vulkan, dropping support for DirectX 9 and OpenGL. Finally it will stop supporting XAudio, switching to SDL Audio.

The blog points out how Dota 2 already takes advantage of the newer operating systems and APIs for better graphics, sound and performance. Until now however, Valve has still been supporting players who are on the older systems. The blog suggests it's dropping support to free up resources to focus on more up-to-date systems. "Removing these older technologies will let us streamline our development efforts as well as use the newer features of these APIs to provide an even better Dota experience."

Valve doesn't have public numbers for what percentage of Dota 2 players this will affect, but it says nothing will change for "most" players. A look at the stats for all Steam users (Dota 2 remains one of the most popular games on Steam) reveals that less than one percent are using the 32-bit versions of Windows 7 or 10, and less than 0.2 percent are using macOS versions older than 10.14.

For comparison, Riot Games' League of Legends lists 64-bit Windows in its recommended system requirements, but not minimum. It still supports macOS going back to 10.12 but doesn't support DirectX 9. Valorant, despite having similarly generous system requirements, already only supports 64-bit Windows.

The same blog post also announced Valve will start selling tickets to the 2021 Dota 2 International Championships on September 22 at noon Eastern. The Championships begin on October 7 in Bucharest, Romania. Valve is requiring all in attendance to be fully vaccinated against Covid-19 and to wear a mask. The company linked to an FAQ with further details.