Sticking with today’s trend of game developers airing out their opinions via blogs, we have an alleged Valve employee sharing his views on fellow developer and Valve employee Abdul Ismail aka IceFrog. For those not in the know, IceFrog is known for his work on the much loved WarCraft III custom map, Defense of the Ancients (DotA).
The Valve employee in question has chosen to remain anonymous in order to protect his job, and the job’s of those he referes to in his post on the freshly created IceFrog Truth blog. Once again we shall have to take all this anonymously presented info with a pinch of salt, but it does make for good reading.
Whilst the anonymous Valve blogger doesn’t work directly with IceFrog, he says he has numerous friends at the company who do, presumably working on the recently announced DOTA 2 project.
Anonymous Valve blogger had this to say about Adul Ismail: “Ever since Abdul has joined Valve, he has been poisonous to the company. He is incredibly hard to work with, absolutely impossible to talk to in person due to a complete lack of social skills, and easily holds the most unpleasantly domineering work personality of anyone I have ever met.”
“This is not just my opinion, but the opinion of almost everyone I know who has come in contact with him. Abdul’s project is not only becoming one of the most controversial inside the office, but one of the most controversial outside. He is taking the company in a direction I thought we would never head in because he demanded unparalleled control and for some reason was granted it,” he continued.
Anonymous Valve blogger goes on to accuse Ismail of being a compulsive liar, suggesting that he misrepresented his past when being hired by Valve. It was uncovered that Ismail had previously been involved with pitching a DotA clone idea to Riot Games, who went on to create League of Legends (LoL). Ismail wound up working on Heroes of Newerth (HoN) at S2 Games.
To back up these allegations, anonymous Valve blogger directs our attention to a letter posted by former DotA co-developer and current Riot Games developer Steve ‘Pendragon’ Mescon. Other evidence comes in the form of a MyLife listing for Ismail which lists his places of residence, which nicely line up with the locations of S2 Games and Valve.
According to the blog, Valve has independently verified these facts after employing Ismail. If all this is true, the question is, why did Ismail apparently conceal his previous employ when hopping onboard with Valve? Anonymous Valve blogger is concerned about the ethical ramifications of such actions.
He also takes one final stab at Ismail, labeling him a poor designer, and calls into question the abilities of Valve’s project lead, Erik Johnson.
So basically, what this all boils down to is that an anonymous blogger claiming to work for Valve doesn’t like Ismail very much, thinks he is a poor game designer, a liar and an ethically unsound person. Some might joke that this is the perfect personality for the designer of a game with a notoriously caustic community of players.
Meanwhile, Riot Games leads Steve ‘Pendragon’ Mescon and Steve ‘Guinsoo’ Feak are presumably still in the process of counter-filing for the DotA trademark, in order to preserve it for the community at large, and wrestle it from the hands of a corporate entity such as Valve, as reported by PC Gamer.
In South Africa, the Twilight WarCraft III and DotA community has remained strong, despite the introduction of LoL and HoN. HoN has attracted a large number of South African players, whilst LoL is doing so to a lesser degree.
Twilight community reaction to the news of DOTA 2 has been mostly positive, but not many people have had chance to digest the news and weigh in with their opinions. Stay tuned as it will undoubtedly turn into a hot debate.
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