Dota 2: Valve and Blizzard make peace

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By Mangri 'Xenocid' Cosmin

May 12, 2012 03:00

Blizzard reached an agreement with Valve regarding the trademark issue with DOTA.

In February, Blizzard filed a formal opposition to Valve’s application for a trademark of the name Dota. This action broke the community in two sides, one claiming that Blizzard should receive the rights to the name because the map was first launched as a Starcraft mod and then as a Warcraft mod, both using Blizzard’s platform. The other side rooting for Valve, stating that they are the only ones that took interest in Dota, creating a separate platform for a better experience.
After months of debating, an agreement was finally reached.

Rob Pardo, executive vice president of game design at Blizzard Entertainment said:

"Both Blizzard and Valve recognize that, at the end of the day, players just want to be able to play the games they're looking forward to, so we're happy to come to an agreement that helps both of us stay focused on that. As part of this agreement, we're going to be changing the name of Blizzard DOTA to Blizzard All-Stars, which ultimately better reflects the design of our game. We look forward to going into more detail on that at a later date."

Valve president Gabe Newell added:

"We're pleased that we could come to an agreement with Blizzard without drawing things out in a way that would benefit no one. We both want to focus on the things our fans care about, creating and shipping great games for our communities."

According to the press release, the companies do not plan to discuss the terms of the agreement beyond today's announcement.

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