Umm..considering the dates in OP, what does that mean for Dota2? It's supposed to be released this year. Doesn't the court usually 'freezes' such things until the matter is resolved?
However it first appeared on a Blizzard tech and the creator signed those rights over before uploading that game to Blizzard. Blizzard helped fund tournaments and such with that modded game and marketed it, making it a very popular game. Based on that, Blizzard has a pretty decent claim on the Valve DOTA which is pretty much just a re-skin of DotA. Even though the creator of that game signed over the rights to Blizzard and is making the same thing for Valve now, he shouldn't be allowed to create the same game again and exploit those ideas for a rival company. He may have made those gameplay mechanics up but they were all based on Blizzard's technology and made his self known to this niche through it.
My money is on Blizzard.
Blizzard are mad that they didn't do shit with one of the popular games in the world.
Read the filing and the answer, Blizzard makes a decent argument that deserves to be heard, let the courts decide.
i don't approve of this position they've put themselves in..First images from the courtroom
did they hire those who made WC3 and B.net, which obviously and without doubt was the only reason DotA became as popular as it is now?
DotA wasn't the sole creation of Ice Frog or Eul, its success was heavily dependent on the assets of Blizzard and WC3 creation tool and also B.Net popularity.
Would DotA become nearly as popular if it was an Age of Empires map? (well, not that it was possible to begin with).
Yeah, because releasing a game comercially without trademarking the brand is the usual thing...DOTA has always been a community project, loads of people have worked on it, there have been forks and in the end the game is the better for it. Noone is solely responsible for building the DOTA brand and thus noone has the right (morally) to trademark DOTA for themselves, not Eul, not Icefrog, not Blizzard, and certainly not Valve. It belongsto everyone.in a museum
I'm as much of a Valve fan as the next person and greatly looking forward to the game, but filing for the trademark is a dick move.
DOTA has always been a community project, loads of people have worked on it, there have been forks and in the end the game is the better for it. Noone is solely responsible for building the DOTA brand and thus noone has the right (morally) to trademark DOTA for themselves, not Eul, not Icefrog, not Blizzard, and certainly not Valve. It belongsto everyone.in a museum
I'm as much of a Valve fan as the next person and greatly looking forward to the game, but filing for the trademark is a dick move.
Do you believe that Half-Life belongs to everyone who ever worked on it at Valve, even the ones who are no longer employed there?
- Commercial product
- Non-commercial product
Someone made a Warcraft 3 custom map called Defense of the Ancients.
Valve later hired that person and also a person who curated the mod for years afterwards.
They trademarked the word "DOTA" and called their game DOTA 2.
Blizzard sues Valve over this.
Wrong.
Eul made Defense of the Ancients. Valve didn't hire him.
Guinsoo was one of many Dota copycats for TFT, but since Eul didn't update the map for TFT it ended up becoming the de facto Dota. He also tweaked the gameplay heavily. Guinsoo works for Riot Games.
After Guinsoo quit updating the map, he eventually was succeeded by Icefrog. Valve hired Icefrog.
Both products. The notion that Eul who came up with the name does not have the right to it is incomprehensible to me.
This seems like they're trying to delay the release of DOTA 2 more than anything.
I wonder what Blizzard is hoping to accomplish here -- they're not losing money if they're not making a MOBA-type game. Maybe they have something in the works. (probably not)
I never understood how a game made using Blizz assets, Blizz lore, and Blizz Engine could be licensed by Valve. Has Blizz Sued Riot? Valve could have avoided this by not trademarking the game.
Blizzard was just late to the party and missed out a huge opportunity to make more money. They see DOTA games are becoming just as large as SC2, and may even pass it soon. They want dat increased cash flow, and nobody is gonna play their shitty SC2 mod dota over dota 2.
I can't see Blizzard winning this. It might not be so clear that the IP belongs to Valve now, but it sure as hell doesn't belong to Blizzard just because it was a mod for their game. If Blizzard had created the mod, sure. But they didn't.
Blizzard isn't trying to obtain the rights to Dota, they're trying to protect it from being commercialized by Valve when Valve has little right to title their MOBA game 'Dota 2'.
Dota should be public domain, period. To many individuals have participated in its success and itterated it in various seperate directions for any one company or individual to be able to claim ownership. That's why Pendragon and Guinsoo called their stand alone product League of Legends instead of calling it something like 'Dota AllStars 2'.
You don't hire the remaining developer of Dota, after everyone else whom has contributed just as much and more, and say that means you can trademark Dota and make Dota 2.
Yeah but Valve didn't claim the acronym DOTA, they have Dota as an independent noun. I though Valve had already won this. In fact, blizzard publicly gave Valve their blessings. Is this another Mojang V. Bethesda?
They also hired the original creator, Eul.
Everyone already knows they have Blizzard DOTA in the works. Of course they don't want Valve to trademark DOTA in that case. They might have no issue with valve trademarking something like "Valve's Dota" or something else.
Some part of me hopes Blizzard makes some progress on this. Ideally enough that Dota 2 has to get rid of the lazy naming and lack of creativity for the champions.
I know they are just carried over but that doesn't make them good.
Even if it happens, it won't release until, say, 2015 at the very earliest. Blizzcon is canceled this year which means it likely wouldn't be unveiled this year, Blizzard is notorious for overdeveloping its games until they're perfect and they've already got three full projects going on (WOW expansion, D3, SC2-2, plus the likely console port of D3). They have the resources and the money to do it, obviously, but I don't think Blizzard will be rushed into doing it.
They also hired the original creator, Eul.
Well Dota 2 is going to kill the remaining Defense of the Ancients community, so yes. It does matter. If you like playing DOTA but not Dota 2 then you're going to lose out on a lot actually.
You do realise that once he stops doing so, it most probably will mean that no one else will be able to?
To put it in perspective, if Valve has done it before Ice Frog entering the DotA scene, it would have meant that Ice Frog would never be able to put up a getdota.com, and Valve would be free to sue Blizzard or GG Client or any other entity that they could somehow see making money out of the game; even though most of the community never paid anything for playing DotA?
What Valve is trying to do is: "Hey, DotA community, if you want your community to survive, you have to move to DotA 2, or just be at the whim of us till we allow Ice Frog to maintain the Original DotA. And, oh, of course you will not be able to create a DotA mod for SC2 or WC4 or any other game, cause we will be suing the owner of those games,even if your mod is free"
Blizzard DotA is just a mod for SC2, funnily enough they're just using the name to get more publicity and the game plays nothing like Dota.