"Buy the chicken": Dota supports and the courier

Kura, a.k.a. the courier

The courier in Dota is a unit that delivers items from the shop to your hero. The 2012 dota2.ru guide lists it as "Kura (Chic, courier)." The nickname apparently grew out of the English chic, as in chicken or chick. Whether the courier model in DotA Allstars was actually a chicken has not been established.

The phrase kupi kuru as a standalone meme is not documented; it is a common in-game line with no known original source. What is documented is the nickname Kura, the arguments over who buys the courier, and the end of that purchase in 2019.

A 200-gold courier in the original Dota

As the cyber.sports.ru blog "5 memories of DotA Allstars" recalled, in the original Dota era the courier cost 200 gold, and whoever bought it had to manually "share" control in the settings so teammates could use it. Early versions gave allies control not only of the courier but of the hero too, which led to pranks: dropping items or using someone else's Black King Bar (BKB) or Blink Dagger.

There was no separate courier purchase system, and sources differ on who bought it. A 2020 cyber.sports.ru blog says the mid player usually bought the courier because he needed it most, while a 2018 article on the same site about iCCup is more cautious: "in roughly half of games."

Position five pays for everyone

In Dota 2 the duty settled on supports: the 2012 guide already listed buying the courier and wards as part of their job. A stereotype took shape around position five, the hard support who uses his meager gold to buy the courier and wards for the whole team.

That explains the tone of the joke: "buy the chicken" and "buy wards" are aimed squarely at the support, who by this stereotype is stuck with the shared purchases for the whole team.

Patch 7.23 and a courier for everyone

Patch 7.23, The Outlanders, came out on November 26, 2019. Cybersport.ru summed up the key change for this story: every player now had their own courier instead of one per team. A breakdown on cyber.sports.ru said, "No need to spend money on wards and a courier," and one section was titled "Life as a support got easier."

According to the same breakdown, the new courier flies from level 5 and can place wards from level 15. That is why the card says 2019: it is not the year the joke appeared but the moment it turned into nostalgia for old Dota.

After the patch, the "buy the chicken" formula lost its practical meaning: the courier is no longer shared and no longer has to be bought. The phrase moved from in-game requests to memories.

A chicken in close-up in the picture

In the catalog the meme is illustrated with a photo: a close-up of a chicken's head, with a red comb and wattles and reddish feathers. It is not a game screenshot but an ordinary photo of a bird.

The picture takes the nickname literally: kura becomes an actual chicken. The joke is aimed at people who remember what the courier was called.

Example "buy the chicken" captions

These examples are made up for illustration: "The support at minute zero, with everyone demanding the chicken," "Bought the chicken, wards, and dust, and now it's my fault I have no items," "Dota veterans when they see a chicken," "Patch 7.23: supports buy themselves boots for the first time in ten years."

Captions rely on two themes: the unfairness toward position five and nostalgia for the days before patch 7.23. Newer players who started after 2019 never experienced the shared courier.