When Valve announced that they were going to release DOTA 2, it seems that Blizzard weren’t too pleased about Valve using the DOTA name. They claimed that Valve did not have the rights to the DOTA name which eventually led to a lawsuit. So who emerged the victor? The good news is that apparently both sides have decided to settle their differences and have come to a mutual agreement in which Valve will have the rights to the DOTA trademark, while Blizzard will instead call their own version of DOTA as “Blizzard All-Stars”. However as Alex Ziebart of WoW Insider has pointed out, fans of the game will no doubt still refer to it as DOTA or at least some variant of it. In any case if you’re interested, the press release of the statement both companies gave can be read below after the break.
May 11, 2012 –Blizzard Entertainment and Valve today announced a mutual agreement regarding concerns over the names of upcoming products. In accordance with the agreement, Valve will continue to use DOTA commercially, including DOTA 2, while Blizzard will preserve noncommercial use of DOTA for its community with regard to player-created maps for Warcraft III and StarCraft II.
“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,” said Rob Pardo, executive vice president of game design at Blizzard Entertainment. “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.”
“We’re pleased that we could come to an agreement with Blizzard without drawing things out in a way that would benefit no one,” said Gabe Newell, president and co-founder of Valve. “We both want to focus on the things our fans care about, creating and shipping great games for our communities.”
The companies do not plan to discuss the terms of the agreement beyond today’s announcement.