Valve released a Dota 2 hotfix on July 28, 2026, to fix a Meepo exploit that allowed players to duplicate items and produce effectively unlimited gold during matches. Meepo was temporarily removed from the hero pool while the issue was investigated, but the hero has since returned to matchmaking.
The bug centered on the way Meepo’s clones interacted with the courier, stash, item slots, and the game’s automatic item-combination system. Player reports described a method involving combinable items such as Sange and Yasha. Once the items were kept separate under the right conditions, Meepo could seemingly create additional copies after dying and respawning.
Those duplicate items could then be sold repeatedly, giving the player far more gold than intended. Reports suggested that a Meepo could reach a full six-slot inventory within the opening minutes of a match, creating an obvious problem for public games and ranked play.
The exploit was demonstrated in a Reddit post showing the Meepo bug. The example used Iron Branches, Sange, Yasha, the courier, and the stash to leave items uncombined before triggering the duplication issue. Players also claimed that other combinable items could be affected.
Valve’s follow-up update confirmed that the exploit had been fixed, and the earlier notice about Meepo’s removal was later struck through. Valve has not said whether accounts that deliberately abused the bug will receive bans, matchmaking restrictions, or another punishment.
Meepo has faced several exploit reports in 2026
This was not the first Meepo inventory problem Valve addressed this year. Patch 7.41a, released on March 27, fixed issues involving multiple Armlets of Mordiggian, Observer and Sentry Wards, Hands of Midas, and duplicate copies of the same item. Some of the reported interactions could also crash servers.
Another Dota 2 update on March 31 addressed further Meepo-related item issues. Its fixes covered duplicated Dusts of Appearance, potions and other stackable non-shareable items, along with interactions involving Divine Rapier, Radiance, Hand of Midas, Abyssal Blade, and Disperser.
A separate GitHub issue submitted on July 3 described a Town Portal Scroll problem. Under specific swapping conditions, using a scroll on a Meepo clone could cause the charges on multiple scrolls held by the main hero to synchronize with the stash item’s charge count, resulting in unintended duplication.
Meepo’s permanent, controllable clones give the hero inventory behavior that differs from most of the roster. That makes interactions involving item ownership, cooldowns, swapping, and automatic combinations especially prone to bugs.
The July 28 hotfix should keep the latest duplication issue out of public matchmaking. Players will still be watching for further problems involving Meepo’s clones and inventory system, particularly in ranked matches where exploit abuse can affect MMR.
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Dota 2
Developed by Valve
