After a months-long court battle, Valve and Blizzard have agreed to terms regarding the use of the “DOTA” name in commercial products.
The initial impression is that Valve “won,” in that it will be able to continue development on its DOTA 2 game under that name, while Blizzard will be forced to rename its upcoming Blizzard DOTA title to Blizzard All-Stars. Blizzard can continue to use “DOTA” in its non-commercial and community projects, although the official mod page, for one, has already been renamed.
Blizzard Executive Vice President Rob Pardo issued a statement about the decision, which reads in part:
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.
Regardless of what name is used, fans of both companies should be glad to learn that development on both games will apparently continue — and Blizzard fans can probably expect that All-Stars will be a free-to-play title. As noted in yesterday’s Legendary, the recent Blizzard earnings call refers to two unnamed games: an MMO — almost certainly Titan — and a “free-to-play title.”
The previous earnings report mentioned the exact same game lineup, except with Blizzard DOTA in the place of the anonymous F2P title.
In any case, if the worst Blizzard fans get out of this deal is a name change, they should count their blessings; copyright and trademark cases have turned out far worse.
What do you think of the name change? Are you a fan of the DOTA name or DOTA-style gameplay, which both DOTA 2 and Blizzard All-Stars will certainly feature? Leave your comments below and let us know!
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