Valve vs Blizzard battle over DOTA name comes to an end

The long legal quibble between Valve and Blizzard over the use of the name “DOTA” has come to an end – and it looks like Valve came out on top.

According to an announcement from both companies, a “mutual agreement” was reached whereby Valve can keep their DOTA 2 name, and Blizzard DOTA will be renamed “Blizzard All-Stars”, a nod to the Warcraft III map name, “DOTA All-stars”. However, Blizzard will be allowed to continue to use the DOTA name non-commercially on Battle.net for player-created maps.

“Both Blizzard and Valve recognize that, at the end of the day, players just want to be able to play the games they’re looking forward to, so we’re happy to come to an agreement that helps both of us stay focused on that,” said Rob Pardo, executive vice president of game design at Blizzard Entertainment. “As part of this agreement, we’re going to be changing 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 detail on that at a later date.”

“We’re pleased that we could come to an agreement with Blizzard without drawing things out in a way that would benefit no one,” said Valve president Gabe Newell. “We both want to focus on the things our fans care about, creating and shipping great games for our communities.”

They’re passing it off as a mutually beneficial compromise, but whose game is called DOTA, huh? Nice job, Gabe.