“Blizzard Dota” Renamed to “Blizzardall-stars” to Settle Dispute with Valve

Valve originally filed to trademarkthe “DOTA” name in 2010 as partof the development of DOTA 2 with one of the developers of theoriginal game, IceFrog. Dota (or Defense of the Ancients) originally started out as a community mod for Blizzard’s Warcraft III . The company filed formal opposition to Valve trade marking the name with the U.S. Patent and Trademark office this past February.

As part of the new arrangement between Valve and Blizzard, Valve hold the “DOTA” trademark for the game name and can use it commercially. Blizzard holds on to the non-commercial use of the name for the community mods created by players for Warcraft III and Starcraft III .

“Both Blizzard and Valve recognize that, at the end of the day, players just want to be able to play the games they’re lookingforward to, so we’re happy to come to an agreement that helpsboth of us stay focused on that,” said Rob Pardo, executive vice president of game design at Blizzard Entertainment, in a released statement. “As part of this agreement, we’re going to bechanging 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 detailon that at a later date.” Advertisement

“We both want to focus on the things our fans care about, creating and shipping great games for our communities,” Valve’s Gabe Newell said.