Blizzard: Valve Shouldn't Trademark DotA
- Thread starter Tom Goldman
- Start date
I do want a polished version of DotA on Steam. It would be awesome as long as the characters don't look like the exact model clones of the original DotA.
But DotA is almost a genre. Could Valve just make their own DotA genre? Is Blizzard challenging Valve with their own DotA as rival?
or... (Valve + Blizzard) × DotA = holy union of light, sound and smell. If Nintendo can make a let down by giving Metroid to Team Ninja, surely Valve and Blizzard can make DotA 2.
But DotA is almost a genre. Could Valve just make their own DotA genre? Is Blizzard challenging Valve with their own DotA as rival?
or... (Valve + Blizzard) × DotA = holy union of light, sound and smell. If Nintendo can make a let down by giving Metroid to Team Ninja, surely Valve and Blizzard can make DotA 2.
Go with Blizzard, then. This is something Valve knows will be a hit. Alien Swarm was done by interns I think. Just a clone of Alien Breed.Nile McMorrow said:
They sold Left 4 Dead, Team Fortress Classic and Portal as just experiments that were well done. But they still sold it for full price. Then again... they sold The Orange Box for the full price of just one game.
Pfeheh...Pirate Kitty said:
Yeah, on the surface it's all about whose intellectual property this is and one might be tempted to say DotA obviously belongs to Blizzard who coined the term. Fair enough.
Problem is it's not just about that. As it was well said, to make a professional game out of it one has to trademark the rights to it to protect their investment. Blizzard crying foul at this to me seriously stinks of selectively ignoring the business aspect of it in order to try and spin it into Valve looking bad in the end.
Heh...nice try, but...it's not as simple as that, unless indeed WoW is owned by the community! Stand up for your consumer rights!
Then again, if no professionally made DotA is made...no one needs to trademark it and that's that.
I don't particularly like Blizzard's products and community, and I like Valve. However, I have no preference in terms of Fanboy loyalty
But I'd have to agree with Blizzard that (even though I don't care about the game and didn't know it existed until Valve kicked up this minor scuffle) Valve seems to be trying to copyright something it neither created or had any contribution to
It'd be like ME trying to copyright DotA
Why would I have the right to do that?
But I'd have to agree with Blizzard that (even though I don't care about the game and didn't know it existed until Valve kicked up this minor scuffle) Valve seems to be trying to copyright something it neither created or had any contribution to
It'd be like ME trying to copyright DotA
Why would I have the right to do that?
No one should have the trademark for DotA.
There is no developer in the world that should.
Not Valve, Bioware, Bethesda, or Blizzard. NO ONE.
There is no developer in the world that should.
Not Valve, Bioware, Bethesda, or Blizzard. NO ONE.
wait did you lose faith in blizard after three years of not releasing starcraft 2 or diablo 3?Akalabeth said:
From what I understand, Valve is just doing the same thing it did with Counterstrike, Team Fortress, Day of Defeat and Alien swarm. Hire people involved, and then turn it out as a proper game.
Though I don't think that Blizzard should really be weighing in on this debate due to the reasonable number of community projects they cease and desisted all those years ago when they finally got around to announcing StarCraft 2.
Though I don't think that Blizzard should really be weighing in on this debate due to the reasonable number of community projects they cease and desisted all those years ago when they finally got around to announcing StarCraft 2.
How about the guy that made it? ...oh yeah he works at Valve now.Onyx Oblivion said:
People gotta understand that DoTA 2 is not just a remake of DoTA. Valve will most likely flesh out areas the game lacked in, and add other new features. Without a trademark, anyone can literally just copy and paste any content from the game, including brand new features and innovations.
Blizzard is just pissed that Valve is going to make a profit out of something that spawned in their game, even though they didn't have a hand in making it. Blizzard uses the "community" as an excuse, but if Valve is doing anything is supporting the game making sure it doesn't fade into obscurity.
How about the other two guys who also made it?fundayz said:
Oh yeah they don't work for Valve and also don't want Valve to trademark DotA...
Huh... funny how that turned out.
Doesn't change the fact that Valve needs to protect its work.GamesB2 said:
I'll favor the person who had a hand creating the game original and the company helping to create a worthy sequel over the two guys who also helped create it, but have little do with it now a days. Especially when the company is one, if not the, best companies for community support.
There is no reason to believe that Valve trademarking the game will hurt the community at all. period.
Should the other guys be credited for the basis and concepts for the second game? Sure, and I wouldn't be surprised if Valve sent them a nice fat check when they trademark the brand.
Firstly. Read this [http://icefrogtruth.blogspot.com/].fundayz said:
Secondly, Valve don't have to trademark DotA, it just seems like a huge dickmove, they're coming over and grabbing DotA right from under everyones feet when it was previously a free title.
Blizzard have only said they don't think Valve should trademark it. Explaining over and over again that amazingly the reason Blizzard didn't copyright DotA in the 3 years it could have is not because they're stupid or because their claim got lost in the post. It's because they didn't want to. They kept it free.
If Valve trademark DotA then any DotA mods for other games can be shut down by Valve, so now a company who had nothing to do with the original work will be able to shut down any fan mods.
I sure as hell would, considering the other two creators are running DotA competitors, in fact I wouldn't be surprised if they tried to hype up Icefrog as being the only creator of DotA.
The other two people don't want it trademarked. So if there was any fairness in proceedings then the trademark would be dropped by majority. However who ever said anything about this was fair...
Valve's just being shady.
I'd have to hear more about the claims on both sides.
Going simply by the information here, I more or less agree with Blizzard. I do not think a company should be able to copyright something made for another company, or an IP that they do not own (in this case Warcraft). I believe this sets a dangerous precedent for allowing big companies to basically steal other people's IPs or at least their names. If another equally big company wasn't getting involved, I'd be quite worried about this.
Of course, we have yet to really hear Valve's side of the story, and that means a lot. Despite not being a shooter fan, Valve always seemed fairly decent to me despite their poor work ethics (Half Life Episode 3...) and so on.
But then again if you've been paying attention, Valve has been changing a lot in recent years. They've backed down to censors, they've violated promises to fans as far as game support goes... and that was a big part of the "Left 4 Dead 2" contreversy, and other things.
Valve is still the company that gives us a decent discount on games over STEAM a few times a year, but understand that they seem to have also been getting considerably more ruthless and greedy as well in recent years. Like any company they have always been motivated by making a profit, but there are degrees in how people act in pursuit of that goal and how much of a profit people want to squeeze out of things.
Going simply by the information here, I more or less agree with Blizzard. I do not think a company should be able to copyright something made for another company, or an IP that they do not own (in this case Warcraft). I believe this sets a dangerous precedent for allowing big companies to basically steal other people's IPs or at least their names. If another equally big company wasn't getting involved, I'd be quite worried about this.
Of course, we have yet to really hear Valve's side of the story, and that means a lot. Despite not being a shooter fan, Valve always seemed fairly decent to me despite their poor work ethics (Half Life Episode 3...) and so on.
But then again if you've been paying attention, Valve has been changing a lot in recent years. They've backed down to censors, they've violated promises to fans as far as game support goes... and that was a big part of the "Left 4 Dead 2" contreversy, and other things.
Valve is still the company that gives us a decent discount on games over STEAM a few times a year, but understand that they seem to have also been getting considerably more ruthless and greedy as well in recent years. Like any company they have always been motivated by making a profit, but there are degrees in how people act in pursuit of that goal and how much of a profit people want to squeeze out of things.
You know Blizzard themself already release like 4 DotA like free map for WC3, and they are releasing 1 for SC2 for free.Doug said:
Not like Valve wanting money for everything from adding Micro-transaction to a Pull paid game TF2.
They knew about DotA along since AoS (the very first concept of DotA). They never took it unlike Valve. Heck, they made free maps for us.