The recent trademark filing of “DOTA” by Valve has elicited a plea by fans of the franchise for Valve to abstain from using a game that they believe the community owns. Former Defense of the Ancients developers Steve “Pendragon” Mescon and Steve “Guinsoo” Feak, who helped to create the DotA Allstars, are trying to convince Valve to let the community have the freedom to decide how the franchise should continue on. The pair currently work for Riot Games on the free-to-play DotA-inspired League of Legends.
To Mescon, the trademark filing comes as a complete surprise. Though he understands that Valve stands to gain from making a DotA-inspired game, he remains shocked. He was completely “surprised that [Valve has] decided to try and trademark the DotA name, because it goes against what [he] and others believe DotA means to the community.” By trademarking the name, Valve is attempting to take ownership over the name so that it can “exercise control over its future,” suggests Mescon.
“We are actually really interested to see what they can do with this genre because we are excited to see companies of Valve’s caliber to enter the space that we’ve been working in for the last few years,” says Mescon, admitting that despite the issues, a great opportunity has been presented.
Still though, the “DotA name should remain property of the community at-large, as it always has,” says Mescon.
[Thanks Joystiq]
1 Comments
August 18, 2010
Boo2u Valve, be kool if they made a really advanced graphical DotA game. Heroes of Newearth is also a great DotA style game.