After mysteriously vanishing from the game, Dota 2's Axe has been 'replaced' by a fake

Dota 2 has a new hero - or should that be an old one? It's tough to be sure. If you logged into the Valve MOBA this week, you might have been surprised to find that Axe, one of its longest-standing and most iconic faces, was completely absent from the roster. You couldn't play him, and his spot in the lineup was replaced by the sort of poster you might find asking for help finding a missing person. All of a sudden, however, Axe has returned, just as quickly as he left… but something's not quite right.

This latest update comes in the wake of last week's rumors about the onset of the 'Dark Carnival' - thought to be the theming for the next big Dota 2 event. With Axe seemingly susceptible to his "sense of foreboding," especially when dropped into matches across from unsettling puppeteer Ringmaster, his disappearance was yet another clue that Valve is setting up some big story moment. Fortunately for fans of the dunk master, he wasn't gone for too long - but he seems to have changed rather significantly in the meantime.

The Dota 2 roster now lists the hero as 'Axe?' (with the question mark), and he doesn't appear to be the flesh-and-blood favorite we're all familiar with. In his place is a mechanical construct, complete with a giant clockwork key in his back and a rather jarring, jolting movement style. If you had any question as to who was responsible for his disappearance, I'm pointing my finger squarely at Ringmaster. Perhaps most upsetting of all is the fact that he no longer has an axe, which has been replaced with a hammer.

I do rather like the new style, if I'm honest - he can even spin his, um, hammer in a full 360 simply by rotating his hand completely around at the wrist. The replicant design, which also comes with a whole new set of ability icons, is presumably Valve's attempt at finally returning to the rather horrifying launch trailer for Ringmaster from two years ago. In that, a circus-style 'test your strength' contraption lures the unsuspecting Axe in, before dragging him bodily inside its clanking void of gears and smog.

Enhancing the effect even more was the fact that almost any attempt to test out 'Axe?' or use him in an actual game led to a crash. That part probably wasn't intentional, however, and appears to have been related to effects targeting the hero (I'd imagine this boils down to some backend shenanigans related to the name change). It's now been fixed, so you should be able to give the 'newcomer' a run for yourself - he might have a new look, but I suspect he still earns his place on our list of the best Dota 2 heroes in the current meta.

All of this begs the question: when will the (now seemingly inevitable) event begin? Whether it's actually the Dark Carnival we've all been speculating about, or something entirely new, it must be pretty close to launch at this point. Will other heroes be affected before we get there? Hold your favorites close to your chest, lest the robots and puppetmasters come for us all.