Blizzard and Valve make nice over DOTA trademark
Blizzard Entertainment and Valve announced in a press release today that an agreement has been reached, after a long dispute, over the use of the name DOTA, originally an abbreviation for the fan-made Warcraft III map Defense of the Ancients. Valve will retain the commercial trademark to DOTA, and will not be required to change the name of their upcoming title DOTA 2, a stand-alone sequel to the Warcraft III map.
The International Dota 2 Championships 2012 to be held at PAX Prime this August
Today, Valve announced that the second annual tournament for a game that isn’t out yet will take place at PAX Prime in Seattle. 2012′s Dota 2 tourney will run the weekend of August 31st at the Benaroya Hall, alongside a stop on the $3 million League of Legends tournament organized by rival MOBA-developer Riot. The International uses an invitational format, and so far only two teams have confirmed their invites: China’s DK, and last year’s champions, Natus Vincere (Na’Vi) from the Ukraine.
Dota 2 is bigger than Counter-Strike: Source and Skyrim and it’s not even out yet
Dota 2 is doing rather too well for a game that hasn’t been released. According to Steam stats, it’s the second most played game on Steam right now, ahead of Counter-Strike: Source, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Skyrim and lots of other games that have actually been released. Dota 2 is currently in an ever-expanding beta that’s been running since late last year.
Ready Up – League of Legends and MLG unite, Heart of the Swarm comes to MLG Anaheim
It’s a bit of a quiet weekend for eSports, but DOTA 2 fans will at least be able to watch several games in the ProDOTA 2 Worldwide League. It’s a new league, but a number of major eSports teams from the Americas, Europe, and Asia are already participating. It’s divided into pro and amateur leagues, with the pros battling for a $20,000 season prize purse.
The action starts at 12 p.m. Eastern tomorrow, and you find the whole schedule here, and more information about this weekend’s play over here. Casters TobiWan and Luminous will be calling the games for English-speaking audiences.
However, not to be outdone, the MLG had some big StarCraft and League of Legends-related announcements today.
DOTA 2 will be free-to-play, but will “have some twists,” says Gabe
“[DOTA 2] is going to be free-to-play. It’ll have some twists, but that’s the easiest way for people to think about it.”
As reported by Polygon, that’s what Gabe Newell had to say on a recent Seven Day Cool Down podcast. Valve’s big wheel has already admitted to playing the MOBA for a staggering 800 hours, and now he’s talking cash. Valve have already developed some interesting ideas on how to reward valued members of the community: the Team Fortress 2 workshop allows people to create in-game items, and make a significant profit if they sell. Now Valve are hoping to reward player’s good behaviour too.
Dota 2 China launch is “mandatory if we want DOTA to succeed” say Valve
Enthusiasm for Dota 2 is steadily growing as more and more participants are invited into the beta. Dota 2 regularly features on Steam’s most played list, but those numbers are nothing compared to the number of Dota fans worldwide. One of the biggest international markets is China. Tim spoke to Doug Lombardi recently about Valve’s plans to bring Dota 2 to Chinese audiences.
“You’ve got to address that market, it’s the biggest DOTA population in the world, right?” he said. The problem is that Valve can’t release Steam in China. Publishers need make distribution deals with Chinese companies to gain access to that vast player base. Valve have previously teamed up with Nexon to release Counter-Strike Online in Asia. Now they’re looking to forge a similar deal for Dota 2.
Dota 2 patch files tease microtransactions: masks, taunts and Dr. Kleiner included
Dota 2 player Cyborgmatt has been rummaging through the files of a Dota 2 test build, and has found evidence of dozens and dozens of items that we might be able to buy in the final release. They include new announcers, taunts, new couriers, new hero items, hero skins and more.
There are two types of announcers listed, a general announcer who will commentate on important in-game events like the fall of a tower, and a kill streak announcer whose job it is to shout things like “DOUBLE KILL,” or “UNSTOPPABLE” or “GODLIKE” when one player goes on a roll. One of the announcers is listed as Dr. Kleiner (item_description: “Oh Fiddle Sticks!”). That’s just the start.
Dota 2 and CS: Global Offensive to support the Razer Hydra. Your mouse will also work
As reported on Eurogamer, Valve’s DOTA 2 and Counter Strike: Global Offensive will both support the Razer Hydra, a motion control device which uses magnetic motion sensing to track its two controllers in space.
The Hydra costs £125/$139.99 and already works with over 250 Steam games. Hydra users also got access to six exclusive Portal 2 levels when the device got released last year.
Counter-Strike though, really? I can barely get a headshot when playing with an lazer mouse and four-ply mouse mat – attempting it with a waggle wand in 3D space all sounds a bit much. Still, I’ve not actually used the Hydra, I just fear change. And the chap in the following videos appears to get on just fine. Click through to watch a man explaining the Hydra’s FPS controls, and playing a bit of Skyrim with the space-age apparatus.
The week in eSports
We’re still waiting on the MLG StarCraft 2 Winter Arena videos go become available for free (that happens on Monday), but in the meantime you can check out the highlights from the Leenock – NaNiwa matchup I mentioned earlier this week. There was some stuff I had forgotten, particularly NaNiwa’s maneuvering to open a line of attack on one of Leenock’s expansions. It’s worth watching.
On a related note, the MLG’s Sundance DiGiovanni will be in Boston tomorrow to talk about the future of eSports with Evil Geniuses CEO Alex Garfield, noted caster Sean “Day[9]” Plott, and Blizzard President Mike Morhaime. MIT will stream the discussion here ($21 fee for the conference streams), at 1 P.M. Eastern time.
Decoding Blizzard and Valve’s trademark dispute: who really owns DOTA?
This week, it was finally revealed that Blizzard and Riot are both disputing Valve’s attempts to trademark DOTA in the US ahead of the eventual launch of DOTA 2. The case is fascinating/horrifying for a bunch of reasons:
1) It demonstrates how grey the area of ownership of copyright and materials can be when it comes to mods and total conversions.
2) the documentation we’ve got access to gives a good detail on how Blizzard view themselves and their ownership of community content
3) It may have an interesting knock-on effect on the validity of EULAs.
4) The result of the dispute may have a knock on effect on the DOTA mod itself
5) it’s like watching your mom and dad go through the early stages of a trial separation.
In order to make sense of what’s going on I’ve been digging through Blizzard’s filed trademark objection, and what it might mean for DOTA and community content in the long run. To make it clear: the case is just about the trademark for the name DOTA.
The first point to make: at no point do Blizzard explicitly state that they wish to own the DOTA trademark. In objecting they’re not at present, trying to trademark DOTA for themselves. However, they believe that the terms DotA, Dota: DOTA and Defense of the Ancients are all part of their Warcraft 3 business. Much of their objection hinges on one word: Ancients.
Dota 2 will support LAN play, next International tournament prize pool to be “at least” $1.6m
Valve’s Erik Johnson has told Join Dota that Dota 2 will be getting a LAN mode. “There are some systems that LAN mode requires that we haven’t finished yet, mainly because we’ve been focused on matchmaking. We know how important this feature is for the community,” says Johnson.
He also talked a bit about Valve’s plans for their next big Dota 2 tournament. The Dota 2 International took place at Gamescom last year, offering Dota pros a shot at a piece of the $1.6 million prize pool. Valve are going to at least match that amount in the next tournament. Johnson said that “if you look at any major sport around the world that has an audience of similar size to Dota’s you’ll find that those at the very top in terms of skill tend to make a lot of money.”
“Frankly, we think the teams represented at The International deserve this kind of money for what they do. We all know how hard it is to master Dota,” he added.
Blizzard clash with Valve over DOTA trademark
Blizzard are appealing against Valve’s use of the DOTA trademark. Kotaku have spotted a NeoGaf post that brings to light the appeal notice put before the US Patent and Trademarks office late last year
Blizzard argue that “by attempting to register the mark DOTA, Valve seeks to appropriate the more than seven years of goodwill that Blizzard has developed in the mark DOTA and in its Warcraft III computer game”
The appeal says that the original DOTA mod was originally “distributed, marketed, and promoted by Blizzard and its fans” and is “built upon the 1 Warcraft III game engine, interface, and gameplay mechanics; that is comprised of Warcraft III characters, items, spells, artwork, textures, and color palates; that can be played only using Warcraft III software and via Blizzard’s online service Battle.net.”
DOTA 2 preview
Valve’s main goal with Dota 2, says producer Erik Johnson, was “to build a sequel to a game that 20-odd million people around the world are playing”.
That’s Defence of the Ancients, a free player-made map for Warcraft III. It set out the template for a strange genre of game that’s since inspired a series of massive commercial releases. League of Legends alone has over 11 million active players, more than World of Warcraft.
Dota 2 sticks to the template closely: two teams of up to five players each pick a hero, and control it from a top-down perspective. But there’s already a war going on, between computer-controlled soldiers called creeps. Players are far more powerful, so creeps mainly provide easy kills to boost their experience and gold.
PC Gamer UK Podcast 63 – Dota 2, Batman: Arkham City, new year predictions
It’s a new year, which means a brand new, super shiny, revamped PC Gamer UK podcast! True, there are many similarities to the old PC Gamer UK podcast, but the studio was decidedly cooler than usual on account of it being winter now. Tim, Tom, Graham and Rich gather to discuss our gaming new year resolutions, with words on Dota 2, our most unusual picks for this year’s top 100 and our gaming predictions for 2012.
Download the MP3, subscribe, or find our older podcasts here.
Dota 2 beta is about to expand, comic book launched
A new post on the Dota 2 blog announces that Valve are getting ready to start sending out mass beta invites. “We’ve just finished our first significant expansion of Dota 2 server capacity around the world,” says the post, “that means it’s time to kick this thing up a notch. Starting this week, we’ll be handing out Dota 2 in increasing volumes.”
