Dota 2: Agreement Reached over Use of Name
The seemingly endless despute over who may use the title DotA (Defense of the Ancients) between Blizzard and Valve has finally been settled amicably with both developing behemoths stating that they both just want to concentrate on bringing their fans great games.
DotA began life as a modification of Blizzard’s game Warcraft 3, and it grew to immense popularity. However when one of the mod’s developers went to work for Valve in 2010 he took the name with him and Valve started work on DotA 2. This threw a spanner in the works for Blizzard who had also just begun work on their own DotA. This weekend however, Blizzard and Valve decided once and for all how they will allocate the name. Valve will retain the name DotA for use commercially, but Blizzard is permitted to continue using the name DotA on its forums and on its user created content. This is obviously a no-brainer as it would be impossible for Blizzard to control all of that. However Blizzard DotA will now be known as Blizzard All-Stars. Blizzard released a statement saying that the name change actually better reflects the game that they are building, though of course, given the delicate nature of the situation, this could be Blizzard choosing to be diplomatic, as had they really believed that another name would have been better, they would have chosen it all along and this situation wouldn’t have arisen.
Screenshot from Dota 2 (Credit: Valve)
None the less both developers feel that they have reached an agreement that is fair to both parties, and that hasn’t resulted in any inconvenience to the fans. Who, at the end of the day, are only interested in playing some really great games.
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