Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Blizzard suing Valve over DOTA

Quite recently Activision Blizzard has announced they will be making a game based around DOTA, also known as Defense of the Ancients. This is causing quite a controversy because Valve at the same time, and maybe even before Blizzard, is working on a new game called DOTA 2. This game is set to release in the near future, and in fact, it's already in beta.

But first you have to know that Blizzard is suing over the name DOTA, and not the game itself. Like many games, DOTA first got it's start as a mod to a game engine. While there's nothing wrong with making mods into actual games. The trouble comes when you look at the editor used to make the original mod, as it states anything created using the editor basically belongs to Blizzard. This means all intellectual property, such as the name, belongs to Blizzard. Now, Blizzard has a relaxed policy towards this, as there are many other games that use similar game mechanics and it wouldn't be right to sue them. But... But... Valve is a huge competitor of Blizzard and Activision, which were merged to create Activision Blizzard, and this would really be a huge boost to Valve's sales, as DOTA and the similar offshoots made around it are very popular among the gaming community, so Blizzard wants to take action.

I'm not going to say whether or not Valve should have the name, as both sides have a legitimate argument. Valve with having the actual creator of DOTA on their team creating the game's sequel. Blizzard with their terms and conditions agreement stating that all your intellectual property are belong to them. So I can tell already that if Valve doesn't back down, then there will be a big mess between the two companies.

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