i just noticed this post while browsing. and im a little surprised and confused

So the discussion as ive gathered is will dota 2 be cracked? Well yes it will be , no matter what anyone say's, no matter what posts comes up with reasons of the server.dll been valve only. someone will make a server emulator, or custom launcher with offline play. thats just the way the world is. and frankly ive seen posts by a phew review sites explaining why it "wont be cracked"

By doing that, they just challenged about 20 of the worlds most dangerous hackers who are probably dota fan's like RAZOR and Skidrow

As for your comments about games with Anti piracy

Ubisoft and DRM/AC2 - Ubisoft were DDoS'd by the hacker community into submission, they removed the DRM. and allowed you to locally save your games without a net connection by changing a config setting. all you need now is the initial online connection to launch the launcher and login your account and even thats cracked - Skidrow was behind it. he left a message for Ubisoft saying "nice try guys, we will crack it"

GTA IV - been cracked for years

Sims 3 - You simply block the verification servers in a host file. wholla, playable

Even Modern warfare 2 by the way which you menchoned has AlterIW which is a private server

Now i dont condone hackers and crackers myself. i buy most games i want to play and pay to play online. but for years, wow, lineage 2. and all mmorpg's have had stable private server's. Lineage 2 gave up there population to private server's and NCSoft even tried to shut them down and failed

For your question about how they do it, alot of them use linux. because there are versions of linux specifically based on network penetration and server emulation tools. its freeware after all and they get high grade internet packages/business packages. or buy a hosting server online, or setup a server library of multiple computers running one server. And use donations to pay the bills

Anyway. My opinion, buy the games. cracks will always be around no matter what anyone says or does about it. you cant stop it, no even NASA and Microsoft have stopped hackers. what chance do you think valve has