Valve Trademarks 'DOTA'

An anonymous reader tips news that Valve Software has filed a trademark claim for the term "DOTA," fueling speculation that the company will soon reveal a new Defense of the Ancients game. Voice actor John St. John recently said he was recording for such a game in a post to Twitter. The tweet was subsequently deleted. Last year Valve hired 'Icefrog,' lead developer for the original DotA mod.

Comments

Ok but...

[Anonymous Coward]

What about Half Life? Is this franchise dead or something?

Re:Ok but...

[Pharmboy]

What about Half Life? Is this franchise dead or something?

I doubt it, they are supposedly working on the last Episode, but I'm not shocked that it is taking so long. Remember, whatever happens in the last episode, it sets the stage for the next game. You don't want to kill off people who would be handy later on. The franchise is still very popular, very profitable, and the highest ranking games on Metacritic's website. The rumors of the franchise's death have been greatly exaggerated.

They are talking about making the last episode much scarier, which I think is the right thing to do. I remember the first Half-life literally giving me chill bumps, and making me jump with the head crabs and other assorted critters. The last interview that Gabe gave on it (that I am aware of) was a few months ago: http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2010/03/26/valve-wants-their-next-half-life-to-scare-you/

Re:Ok but...

[bcat24]

What about Half Life? Is this franchise dead or something?

I'm afraid the franchise has reached its half-life.

So it's only mostly dead? There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. With all dead, well, with all dead there's usually only one thing you can do.

Re:dota

[omgarthas]

I get your point, but the clerk and the store didn't hand me a copy of Warcraft 3 for free

Business model

[Issarlk]

1 - choose a popular mod to an existing game.
2 - hire the devs
3 - release standalone Steam version
4 - PROFIT!

Re:Business model

[Netshroud]

That's exactly their business model.

• Counter-Strike
• Day of Defeat
• Team Fortress 2
• Alien Swarm
• Portal

It doesn't surprise me in the least,

Re:Business model

[Winckle]

Hey it's a sound business model that results in quality polished games. Can't knock them for it. :)

Re:Business model

[wynterwynd]

Except technically speaking, Portal was not a mod. It was based off of a proof-of-concept puzzle game called Narbacular Drop.

Other than that, yep.

I can't see it as anything but good for gaming. Gamers know what gamers want and so far the groundswell approach they use has produced some truly great games.

Re:Business model

[PrimalChrome]

eh...how exactly are they profiting off of Alien Swarm? I suppose that with a $0.00 pricetag and the expense of bandwidth they make it up in quantity of sales?

Re:Business model

[Shanrak]

Every additional download of steam (which is required for alien swarm) means an additional exposure to some of their weekend and special sales. Its an excellent way of getting your advertising out, and at the same time it inflates steam user count so it shows publishers how big of a customer base they are losing if they choose to not publish on steam.

Summary is wrong, as usual

[Tridus]

Icefrog is NOT the original developer. I don't know where that nonsense keeps coming from.

The original developer is named Eul, and he made it way back before The Frozen Throne came out. He then stopped supporting it. Guinsoo then made DotA Allstars. Icefrog took that over at version 6, and is the current maintainer.

I don't know how you go from "second maintainer of a remake" to "original author", but it's amazing how fast that spread around the Internet.

Re:Summary is wrong, as usual

[Anonymous Coward]

I would like to add that genre is not "DOTA", it is "AoS".
The original map that created these types of custom games was called "Aeon of Strife". It is a starcraft custom map.

Re:Summary is wrong, as usual

[sammysheep]

Completely true. However, IceFrog has been developing DoTA since 2005. Eul created his version in 2003 (or 2002?). Which means Guinsoo probably developed DoTA for around 2 years. While not the original developer, IceFrog has developed the game for around 5 years and his contributions have made DotA very balanced and interesting to play.

Re:Summary is wrong, as usual

[Tridus]

I played it all the way from the original Eul version, and those weren't buggy or newbie hostile at all. It got a lot more hostile to newbies in remakes as the complexity shot through the roof.

There's really no problem with him maintaining it, he's done a good job. There is a problem with claiming they're in the moral right to trademark it because the original author is working there, because that's a bald faced lie.

Re:Summary is wrong, as usual

[snorb]

Been getting into LoL recently, and while I agree it's very polished (I really like the character designs and the free-to-play model is a good one), the one area that Valve could improve on is making it more newbie-friendly. While LoL may be more newbie-friendly than DoTA, that's like saying Venus is less hot than the sun. It's still not a very hospitable place. It's basically a full-time job to get up to speed with all the acronyms, jargon, and conventions. You join your first match of LoL and your teammate says something like: "I'm going jungle Amumu with an AP Sunfire build so I can tank the carry in the lane with my ult when they ping." and then they get mad at you when you have no idea what they're saying. Don't get me wrong, I do like the game, it's just really hard for beginners like me.

Compare the steep learning curve of TFC where you have to master grenade jumping with every class just to compete with how easy it is to pick up TF2. So hopefully Valve will do something similar with DoTA, and make it accessible.

Re:At first I was angry

[Tridus]

Except they don't. They have the second maintainer of DotA Allstars on board (the original developer of that worked on League of Legends). DotA itself was made by yet another person who isn't involved in either of them.

I'd love to know how you trademark something made by someone else and which someone else has already used on released games.

Name

[al3]

It's Jon St. John, not John St. John.

I'm still stuck with yesterday's story

[Yuioup]

I read "Valve Trademarks 'HOPA'"

Y

Vi-sitter-i-ventrilo-dept

[Hinhule]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTJncWndUB8

If anyone was wondering.

And Steam is their real money maker these days

[Sycraft-fu]

One might notice that they've become extremely lax with regards to development. Source has badly stagnated and as such they aren't really selling any engine licenses. Their own game development proceeds at a snail's pace. However Steam sales are extremely brisk. They are making tons of money on it.

Also Steam is very much a "One platform to rule them all," kind of setup. Steam doesn't play well with others. Their DRM, Steamworks is mandatory for all games on Steam, but also free for anyone to use. In fact retail titles use it now... But if a game is Steamworks then you have to install and run Steam to play the game. This also means you have to allow distribution of your game on Steam, but also that you game probably cannot be distributed on any other download platform. While they don't require that, it is how things go by default. After all, Impulse does not want you to have to download a game through their service, then once it is installing go and install Steam which will ALSO have to run.

Valve really seems to want to push Steam as the one and only way to do games. Everything will be on there, even if you happened to buy it in a store. To that end, pushing Steam to the maximum number of people possible is a real smart idea.

Don't get me wrong, I use Steam and own many games on it, but they do have a bit of the big brother, "We want to control all your media," type stuff going on. If that's your goal, putting out some free products to achieve it is worth while.

Re:dota

[Haffner]

As a fairly avid gamer who has played well over 2000 games of dota (TDA gamecount is in the 1200s), and someone who plays dota as his main game, let me be the first to say: DotA is NOT a good game to get in to. While I love it and think its a terrific game, it is extraordinarily difficult to get into. There are over 90 heroes, each of whom possess 4 skills. There are also probably 60 something (guessing off the top of my head) items. In order to be able to play and enjoy the game, you need to know 1) skills for every hero, and 2) item builds for the heroes you play.

I have tried to get my friends to try dota- the ones that used to play have largely quit for HoN or sc2. The only people I can recommend dota to are the ones that a) are skilled strategy game players, b) enjoy playing wc3, and c) are willing to dedicate the roughly 50+ hours necessary to simply UNDERSTAND dota.

Dota is a competitive, balanced, and rewarding game, but it takes a tremendous time investment before one can enjoy it. In my opinion, for beginners, dota will not be truly fun until you are able to understand the other team/players' strategies and counter them. Most low level dota consists of farming up items and then trying to kill things. While this might be fun for a while, this is like playing l4d2 with computers: it's fun, but you're missing out on the most crucial part of the game

Lastly, most dota players are terrible people. They feign ignorance, love to blame others, and can singlehandedly ruin a game. This is something you need to understand - just one player can make an otherwise great game miserable. Especially in low level league play (like TDA or THR) where there are penalties for leaving a game early, having one of these people on your team can make for 45 minutes of hell. Also, most players won't really progress beyond these leagues, so if you're trying to get in to dota, this is what you have to look forward to.

That said, best of luck... It would be great to have new dota players, or a standalone REAL dota game (that exactly mirrors the wc3 variant - my problem with HoN is it's too different).