A FAMILIAR MEME. A NEW CONTEXT.

Valve Time: Dota 2 and the endless wait

What this meme means

Valve Time is the fan term for Valve's chronic release delays. In Dota 2 its defining case is Diretide and the 2013 “Volvo, giff Diretide” campaign.

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When it's done: where the term comes from

Valve Time is a fan term for Valve's chronic delays relative to announced dates, often by years. The company itself knows and uses the term when announcing delays, and its approach to deadlines is usually summed up as “when it's done.”

The classic examples lie outside Dota. Half-Life 2 was promised for September 2003 and came out on November 16, 2004. Team Fortress 2 was coming “soon” from 1998 and launched on October 10, 2007. Half-Life 2: Episode 3 was promised by Christmas 2007 and never came out.

Diretide 2013 and “Volvo, giff Diretide”

In the Dota community, the defining example of Valve Time is Diretide, a Halloween mode built around Roshan and candy. It debuted on October 31, 2012. A year later, on October 31, 2013, there was no event and no announcement. The response was the “GIFF DIRETIDE” campaign: players spammed the phrase in chats and on social media, started a Change.org petition and even flooded the accounts of the carmaker Volvo, since the joke spelling “Volvo” for “Valve” had long stuck in the community. Volvo's official Twitter responded by tagging the Dota 2 account.

In a November 2013 interview with the Washington Post, as recounted by esports.gg, Gabe Newell admitted: “We had to be really clear that we screwed up.” From there the sources disagree: some say Diretide never happened in 2013, others say the mode did arrive in November with the Three Spirits update, and still others place it in October. The November 21, 2013 patch includes Diretide fixes.

Seven years without Diretide

After 2013, Diretide vanished for a long time. In October 2014 fans again filled Volvo's page with “Give DIRETIDE” comments. The mode only returned on October 29, 2020: Diretide 2020 ran until December 22. Another announcement of the mode followed in 2022, after TI11.

In the Dota community, this is the story cited as the main example of Valve Time: about seven years passed between Halloween 2013, when the event failed to show up on time, and the mode's return.

Battle Pass, Crownfall and Half-Life 3

In June 2026, dota2.ru linked Valve Time to the absence of traditional managers and deadlines at Valve and cited recent Dota examples: the cancellation of the Battle Pass in June 2023 and the delayed acts of the Crownfall event.

A separate thread is the Half-Life 3 jokes. In June 2026, a variable named m_bHackWhyAreYouGuysReadingOurVariableNames was found in Dota 2's code and read as trolling aimed at dataminers hunting for signs of a new Half-Life. Valve has not confirmed Half-Life 3.

Roshan with a bucket of candy

In the catalog the meme is illustrated with a render of Roshan in his Diretide 2020 look: a scaly monster carrying a pumpkin bucket of candy on a white background. It isn't a shot of the 2013 protests but an image from the very event the community waited seven years for.

Roshan with his bucket fits jokes about waiting: he looks like he has finally received something promised to him a very long time ago.

Captions about waiting forever

These examples are made up for illustration: “The patch drops next week. Valve Time,” “Promised to call back in five minutes, but I run on Valve Time,” “Roshan, finally getting his candy.”

Captions usually play on the gap between the promised date and the real one, while Roshan with his candy bucket points to the best-known Dota example: Diretide and the “Volvo, giff Diretide” campaign.