Blizzard Entertainment EVP of game design Rob Pardo has expressed his disappointment at Valve's decision to trademark and develop a Defense Of The Ancients clone called DOTA.
"To us, that means that you're really taking it away from the Blizzard and Warcraft III community and that just doesn't seem the right thing to do," he told Eurogamer.
Defense of the Ancients is a widely popular mod for WarCraft III and it is usually short named as "DOTA" by its fans. In Defense of the Ancients, two teams of up to 6 players each try to use the heroes' abilities, upgrades and enchantments tactically in order to defeat the other team's heroes and help their army win.
During the recent Blizzcon fan convention in Anaheim, CA, Blizzard unveiled "Blizzard DOTA", a new StarCraft II map inspired by the original WarCraft III DOTA.
Pardo noted that Valve is well known for supporting the mod community, and that's why "It just seems a really strange move to us that Valve would go off and try to exclusively trademark the term considering it's something that's been freely available to us and everyone in the Warcraft III community up to this point. "
Valve's DOTA's development is being led by IceFrog, the custodian for the DotA Allstars variation of the WarCraft III mod. According to Valve, the only major difference between the new DOTA and the original one is in the graphics and the integration with Steam.