We just received word from Blizzard that an agreement has been reached in the high-profile copyright dispute between Blizzard and Valve, who both have upcoming games with the acronym "DOTA" in it.
The acronym stands for Defense of the Ancients, a mod that was created for Warcraft III and was based on a map called Aeon of Strife in the original StarCraft. Somewhat by chance, both Blizzard and Valve announced new games in the same genre which utilized the DOTA name.
Blizzard claimed ownership over the name because it was developed as a mod for one of their games. Valve claimed ownership because the creator of the mod now works for Valve on DOTA 2.
Though the terms of the agreement weren't made available, we're told Blizzard will be changing the name of their game to Blizzard All-Stars while Valve will retain the name DOTA 2.
"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."
