How Zenko analyzes Dota 2

Zenko reads your public Dota 2 match data, the record the game publishes after each match, read-only:

• Steam sign-in, only to learn which Dota 2 account is yours. Steam confirms the account on its own site, so Zenko never sees your Steam password, and we do not read your friends, inventory, or anything else from Steam.
• Your public Dota 2 profile when you connect: your display name, your medal, and whether your match data is public.
• Your ranked matches: hero, result, kills, deaths, assists, gold and experience per minute, last hits, denies, hero damage, tower damage, healing, level, match length, party size, and whether anyone left the match.

Zenko never changes anything on your Steam or Dota 2 account, and you never report a score or send a screenshot.

Your match data is only public while Expose Public Match Data is on in Dota 2. It is off until you turn it on, you cannot connect while it is off, and games you play with it off cannot be read. The setting lives inside the game, not on the Steam website.

1. Open Dota 2 and go to Settings.
2. Find Expose Public Match Data under Social and turn it on.
3. In Zenko, open your Dota 2 page and choose Connect with Steam.

Most Dota 2 challenges are settled by one ranked match. The first qualifying match you begin within 12 hours of starting the challenge decides it: meet the target and you win, miss it and the challenge ends as a loss. A challenge over several matches, like kills added up across your next few, is settled by those matches instead, still within 12 hours. There is nothing to report and nothing to settle by hand.

What qualifies: a ranked match you queued for solo, on the Steam account you connected, that begins after you start the challenge and within 12 hours. Party ranked, unranked and Turbo games, and games shorter than 15 minutes, do not count and do not use up an attempt. Neither does a match you left or one another player abandoned.

If no match decides a one-match challenge within 12 hours, it is cancelled and any entry is returned. A one-match challenge that asks for a win is decided the same way: a match you lose ends it as a loss.

On a challenge over several matches, a match you lose still counts as one of them, and any win it asks for can come in any of them. If time runs out on a challenge over several matches, the matches you played decide it, and falling short is a loss. If you played none, any entry is returned.

Dota 2 publishes a match only after it ends, so nothing is read while you play. A ranked match reaches your public match data about three to five minutes after it ends. While a challenge is running, Zenko checks every three minutes, so your result follows soon after. Your running challenge in the Activity panel has a "Check for match" button, usable every minute.

With no challenge running, your match history refreshes on a schedule that follows how recently you played: about every hour if you played in the last day, every six hours if you played in the last week, and once a day otherwise, or once a day however much you play if you have not played a challenge on Zenko in 30 days.

These reads run at a steady, capped rate and only for linked accounts, so unlinking stops them.

Targets are built from your own recent ranked matches. Each one starts from what you usually reach and asks for a little more, and a harder level asks for more again. A hot streak raises your next targets, a cold streak relaxes them.

This is personal tuning, not an alternate ranking system. Zenko does not publish a public leaderboard and does not re-rank the Dota 2 ladder. The performance standing on your profile compares your play across Zenko with other Zenko players. It is not a skill rating or a ranking of all Dota 2 players.

What we store: your Dota 2 account link, your display name and medal, the matches we read, and aggregated analysis metrics.

What we do not store: your Steam password, which Zenko never sees, or anything from Steam beyond which account is yours.

Unlinking: a linked account is locked to your profile. To change or remove it, contact Zenko at support@zenko.gg. When an account is unlinked, we delete the analysis and rank data built from it and mark the link released. The match records we read are kept against that Steam account, so linking it again does not re-read them, and they are cleared if a different Zenko player links it.

For detailed privacy and data retention policies, see /privacy and /legal.