Blizzard: Valve Shouldn't Trademark DotA
- Thread starter Tom Goldman
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Defense of the ancients. A mod made for WC3, back in the days. You choose a hero, and you try to kill the opposing players' base with it, while trying to defend your own. Heroes gain levels and buy items, similarly to a lot of RPG games. You need to balance between trying to stop your enemy from leveling, leveling up yourself, and killing the enemy.Tinneh said:
It's a very team oriented game, and a very competitive one.
I haven't played DoTA much, but I understand it's pretty much 1:1 to Heroes of Newerth, a game which was made after people realized that DoTA could make loads of money, if it was a standalone game.
DoTA and especially Heroes of Newerth, are renowned for having what are probably THE worst online communities in any game.
Considering Blizzard is making their own DotA this sounds like they are just upset somebody got there first. If people really wanted to make sure nobody could lay claim to DotA they should have registered it as public domain.
From what I hear there were people that worked on DotA before Icefrog but, he was the one that put the most work into it. He is apparently responsible for fixing all the bugs and balancing it to its current state. Others related and unrelated to the people that work on DotA make games similar to it but, none actually call it DotA. Valve hires Icefrog to make essentially DotA: All-Stars for them a few years ago, announce they area calling it DotA 2 recently, and then this happens.
Upside to what Valve is trying to bring to DotA is a system to help new players with a mentor system and reward people that help this way. This will hopefully lessen the number of elitist pricks that infest that community.
From what I hear there were people that worked on DotA before Icefrog but, he was the one that put the most work into it. He is apparently responsible for fixing all the bugs and balancing it to its current state. Others related and unrelated to the people that work on DotA make games similar to it but, none actually call it DotA. Valve hires Icefrog to make essentially DotA: All-Stars for them a few years ago, announce they area calling it DotA 2 recently, and then this happens.
Upside to what Valve is trying to bring to DotA is a system to help new players with a mentor system and reward people that help this way. This will hopefully lessen the number of elitist pricks that infest that community.
This reminds me of back when the term "feta" was trademarked.
For all intents and purposes, everyone still calls it feta, all the copyrighters managed to do was make themselves out to look like massive cockheads because they were trying to interfere in the way we act and talk.
What I'm trying to say is that just like Feta meant, and in my book still means, brined curd cheese, DotA was, and forever will be, a gaming genre. LoL is a DotA game, HoN is a DotA game, that shitty assault mod in CoH that nobody plays is a DotA game. It's a genre. What Valve is trying to do the equivalent of copyrighting the term FPS or RTS. Sure, it's within your rights, but it will backfire because you are forcing a manner of speech upon other people.
That's not to say I find the Blizzard standpoint particularly sympathetic either: The last time I checked Blizzard was still the final boss of copyright bullshit, with their witchhunt of private servers and stubborn refusal to let community sites make money.
For all intents and purposes, everyone still calls it feta, all the copyrighters managed to do was make themselves out to look like massive cockheads because they were trying to interfere in the way we act and talk.
What I'm trying to say is that just like Feta meant, and in my book still means, brined curd cheese, DotA was, and forever will be, a gaming genre. LoL is a DotA game, HoN is a DotA game, that shitty assault mod in CoH that nobody plays is a DotA game. It's a genre. What Valve is trying to do the equivalent of copyrighting the term FPS or RTS. Sure, it's within your rights, but it will backfire because you are forcing a manner of speech upon other people.
That's not to say I find the Blizzard standpoint particularly sympathetic either: The last time I checked Blizzard was still the final boss of copyright bullshit, with their witchhunt of private servers and stubborn refusal to let community sites make money.
The person who owns the DotA name is Eul, the original creator of Defense of the Ancients, before DotA-Allstars ever existed. Most people don't know that DotA-Allstars is just one of several spinoffs of a much older, simpler map, which itself was a recreation of the Starcraft map Aeon of Strife. The people behind the current DotA just copied and updated Eul's map and called it DotA-Allstars. So legally Blizzard has the rights as the game was made with their software, and morally Eul has the rights since he started it, but truthfully whoever made Aeon of Strife owns it because the entire game mode was their idea.
Shouldn't DotA be protected under the Creative Commons license that comes from basically anything automatically? How does Valve get around that? It's not like they can't claim this DotA 2 was inspired by it or anything. Would be weird if they could take the trademark for it just like that.
Then again, if they copyright "DotA 2" but "DotA" is still free to use...that could work. Would be weird though.
Then again, if they copyright "DotA 2" but "DotA" is still free to use...that could work. Would be weird though.
Crazy idea.... how bout Valve and Blizz work together on this? That way we'll get the genius that is Blizzard, and hopefully the awesome folks at Valve can delay the inevitable fact that the Activision part of Blizzard is going to have Mr. Kotick walk on over and stick his dick in everything.
Either way, the game will be great, and I don't think Valve is gonna just say "No, its our's".
Either way, the game will be great, and I don't think Valve is gonna just say "No, its our's".
indeed, i agree, but read my point a bit further in when i explain how i feel about the issue. its about supporting the modders, not so much the community from my stance... im glad the guy now has a dedicated team working behind him. with this he can make a really polished game, and a income at the same time. victory for hard work and dedication imoSpazz102 said:
Valve did not trademark "Defense of the Ancients" they trademarked "DOTA".
Also "Dota 2" is being created by IceFrog who Valve hired, whose the guy who made the first one.
If you wrote a book which was freely available and then wrote a sequel which was published by a big company, you still retain the rights to your intellectual property.
Also "Dota 2" is being created by IceFrog who Valve hired, whose the guy who made the first one.
If you wrote a book which was freely available and then wrote a sequel which was published by a big company, you still retain the rights to your intellectual property.
I thought that it was weird as soon as I saw it. I love Blizzard and I love Valve (Valve slightly more as Blizzard has Activision attached to it). But I don't think either should have the copyright. It was not created by either, it belongs to the community. However, if one company should own the copyright, it should be Blizzard. It was their game that was modded to create it. That being said, I would love to see a DotA game from Valve.
Making a mod to a game doesn't give the team that made the game amny rights on the mod.Aurgelmir said:
Flash games don't belong to adobe.
The important thing is that valve hired the team.
Also Portal a valve game mod? lol
http://half-life.wikia.com/wiki/Narbacular_Drop
ok, my bad on Portal.GiantRedButton said:
But my point is still this:
By hiring the mod makers from their own games, they are just improving on their own product line, and making well established mods to their products even better.
By hiring the mod makers from other games they are doing no such thing. They get good talent.
But what Valve is doing now can be considered an act of hostility towards blizzard.
That said, blizzard should have done the same if they wanted DotA, but they are saying they want it to be a public domain.
The guy who created the game, his intellectual property. If Valve ask him if they can make a sequel to HIS intellectual property and he says yes then it should be fine right? Let's not forget they did the same thing with Team Fortress Classic as that was a QUAKE mod originally.
i can see where blizz is coming on this. i don't think the name should be copyrighted but i still think they should make the game. it was created by the W3 community thus should remain a free name. they didn't make the first one, so it's stupid that they would want to copyright their unoriginality. make the game, don't copyright the name. besides, publicly, it looks bad. if they just say, "we will go through with making DOTA 2, but the name will still be public domain" i think that would get lots of support. plus, it could bring some blizz fanboys who aren't already playing valve games over to them and let them broaden their horizon. just saying