Dota2's Pudge became the first character to be played in more than 10 billion games in MOBA history, while portly butcher became the game's most popular character in nearly 300 million games.

As tracked by the website Dotabuff, Pudge has played in 1,000,059,649 Dota2 games at the time of writing, with a pick rate of 33.03%. It was inspired by the butcher boss of the second most popular character, Phantom Assassin [704,021,392 matches played by comparison and a pick rate of only 23.25%,

Diablo 1, Pudge is present as far as Dota has, and is one of Dota2's most popular characters. The character continues until 2016. Pudge has found ingenious ways to exploit his abilities, including the infamous "Fountain Hook" strategy made famous by player Dendi in International 2013, with active hook abilities that allow him to pull other players towards him and all the enemies he kills and damage buff him.

Pudge's legacy goes beyond Dota2, affecting many similar characters in other multiplayer games. These include Roadhog in Overwatch, which combines Unreal Tournament-style flak with Pudge-like hook abilities, and Blitzcrank in League of Legends.

However, while Pudge is the most popular Dota2 character, he doesn't have the highest overall winning percentage. The owner of that particular title is OmniKnight, with a winning percentage of 56.2%. Pudge's winning percentage, by comparison, drops towards the middle of the table at 50.96%. This may be because his popularity means he is played by inexperienced players, but Pudge is one of Dota2's weak characters early in the game

Dota2 underwent some major changes last year. In 2023/6, Valve announced it was moving away from the battle pass model, citing that most players "don't buy" it anyway. Later that year, Valve cracked down on third-party battlepaths and played digital Krampus by luring thousands of cheating players into the ban with fake Christmas presents at Christmas.