Being a professional noob at Dota 2, I have regretfully spent thousands of hours on this soul sucking game. Despite my love-hate relationship with this MOBA genre title, I still play it regularly and my go to matchmaking server/region is Singapore which is also known as SE Asia (South East Asia). I choose it due to its high player volume and good ping.
The SEA region is highly competitive than other Valve servers (US East, Europe East/West) but it can be toxic at times due to obvious reasons.
Easy Fix Command – New Update 14th April 2023
In this newer fix, VPN is no longer required. Now you can bring back the SEA region in Dota 2 by entering a console command inside the game.
- Go to Settings > Options > Click “To Advance Options” > ✅ Enable Console
- Press \ (Backslash) key to open console. Enter the command mentioned below. That’s it. SE Asia will be set as primary server.
dota_matchgroups_new 0008
- Click Play Dota and enjoy the game.
Before Fix
Recently, after Dota 2 bug fix update, SEA servers, including US East region stopped appearing in the Matchmaking for a large number of players globally. It’s not confirmed whether it’s a bug or a new policy from Valve. In my personal opinion players should be free to choose the region where they want to play, there should not be any geo-restrictions as most players have high latency/ping and packet loss problems due to bad ISP peering.
How to Fix SEA, US East Server Not Showing in Dota 2 Matchmaking
Requirements: VPN app with multiple servers
Unfortunately, it seems that Valve is geoblocking players based on their IP address. This can only be bypassed through a VPN connection. For example; If you are located in Middle East or South Asia, the SEA server will not appear in the region selection for you. You will need to connect to a Japan VPN server or nearby countries’ IP address such as Malaysia or Philippines.
You can find dozens of free VPN apps for Windows 10/11 on the internet, I won’t list them here. Just sign-up for a trial account, as you will only need it for 5 minutes for this tutorial.
After Fix using VPN
Steps to Fix
Follow the steps carefully, don’t worry you won’t get any high ping with this method.
- Exit Dota 2 and Steam Client.
- Start your preferred VPN application, and select the Japan VPN (or any server that is near to Singapore) and connect to it. Go to Google, type “What’s my IP address” to verify that your IP address is changed to new location.
Note: I have successfully tested Japan VPN to be working. I was able to connect, queue up for a Turbo game on SEA region.
3. Once you have new internet IP address, start Steam Client and Launch Dota 2. Make sure the Steam Cloud is synchronized and game coordinator is up and running
4. Click Dota 2 matchmaking region list and you will see that SEA server starts appearing/showing up again.
5. Now select SE Asia server, and click OK, leave the Dota 2 running as it is. Don’t queue up for a game just yet!
6. Now press ALT+TAB switch back to Desktop, and disconnect the Japan VPN that we connected to.
7. Go back to Dota 2 again, wait for the game coordinator to connect successfully. Your matchmaking region will now be set as SE Asia. It will stay there unless you change it.
If for some reason, the SEA region disappears, repeat the steps mentioned above.
