Today, IceFrog, the man behind Dota 2 at Valve, announced that Dota 2 will have an official launch during beta. Instead of a long period of beta testing where an official launch will follow, the beta will be opened and act as a launch.
"Welcome to the new plan: We’re going to take the current version of Dota 2, which has The International set of heroes, and get it out there as fast as we can. We’ve still got some work to do in a couple of areas, so we’ll be keeping it invite-only for a (hopefully short) period of time. But there’ll be no restrictions on what players can do with it – they can release screenshots, make movies, shoutcast matches, write guides, publicly make fun of our HUD, or anything else their hearts desire. While they do that, we’ll be shipping regular updates with more heroes, new features we’ve been working on, and improvements on the existing content as we get more and more feedback."
This move is becoming a popular trend these days in PC Gaming. Games like Minecraft, League of Legends, and APB: Reloaded have monetized and launched during the beta process. It also seems to push Dota 2 closer to the Free to Play model, though Valve has made no official comment on that. This will give Valve a large playerbase during a free launch, which is exactly what a game needs to successfully add microtransactions. It isn't likely that they would have millions playing then ask them to pay outright for the game they've had access to for months or years once beta ends.