Volvo give Diretide: the 2013 Halloween uproar

Diretide 2012: candy for Roshan

Diretide is a Dota 2 Halloween event in which teams collect candy and feed it to Roshan. Valve announced it on October 31, 2012, shortly after Invictus Gaming won TI2, and the event ran for about two weeks. According to esports.gg, it had three stages: Candy Chaos (collecting and stealing candy within 20 minutes), Trickster Awakens (Roshan leaves his lair and demands candy) and Sugar Rush (all ten players team up to kill Roshan against the clock). Halloween events were a Valve tradition: in Team Fortress 2, Scream Fortress plays a similar role.

But in 2013, October 31 came with no event and not even an announcement. That is what set off the fan campaign. The joke itself rests on the fact that many Valve fans jokingly call the company “Volvo,” as GameSkinny notes.

Giff Diretide: the 2013 wave of demands

Fans filled forums, public chats and social media with demands. “Give Diretide” quickly turned into “Giff Diretide” and “Volvo giff Diretide,” and a petition appeared on Change.org. The deliberately misspelled “giff” became part of the joke itself.

Messages also went to carmaker Volvo, on its Twitter, Facebook and Reddit, often with the tag “daed gaem, Volvo pls fix!” Kotaku noted that a tweet from Dota 2 caster Toby “TobiWan” Dawson helped fuel the wave, and that even Barack Obama's Facebook page got hit. Dota 2's user score on Metacritic was dragged down from above 8 to 4.2.

As Kotaku reported, moderators were deleting threads containing the word “Diretide,” and Cyborgmatt, a well-known figure in the Dota 2 community, received threats.

Volvo Cars' reply and Valve's “Not my best work” post

On November 2, 2013, Volvo Cars replied on Twitter, quoting TobiWan's tweet: “we certainly haven't missed that the people want Diretide, but is @DOTA2 listening?” In effect, the company redirected the fans' demand to Dota 2's official account. According to Kotaku, Volvo also posted “support” for Dota 2 fans on its Facebook page.

Valve responded with a blog post titled “Not my best work.” As Engadget reported on November 10, 2013, the company explained that a big Halloween update had been delayed and there wasn't time to switch to Diretide. Engadget wrote that the next update looked likely to include “a somewhat belated Diretide,” but gave no firm date.

After 2013 and Diretide's return

Sources disagree on whether the promised event came out: esports.gg says no belated Diretide was released in 2013. Later, according to esports.gg, Gabe Newell told The Washington Post: “We had to be really clear that we screwed up.” A 2014 Valve blog post said there would be no Diretide that year.

According to Liquipedia, Diretide ran in Dota 2 from October 29 to December 22, 2020. Valve announced the event again in 2022, shortly after TI11 wrapped up.

Roshan in Diretide artwork

The catalog card shows a fragment of Diretide artwork: Roshan with his jaws wide open and sharp teeth, bathed in an orange glow.

Roshan is the event's central character: in Diretide he's the one being fed the collected candy.

Giff Diretide-style captions

Examples made up for illustration: “October's almost over and still no event. Volvo give Diretide.”

“Emailing the car dealership support: daed gaem, Volvo pls fix!” or “When you want an update so bad you're ready to message a car company.”