Valve and Blizzard settle dispute over use of DOTA

Blizzard and Valve have announced a mutual agreement over the use of DOTA. Valve will continue to use DOTA commercially, while Blizzard's DOTA will be called Blizzard All-Stars.

Defence of the Ancients is a Warcraft III map created by modders and in February, Blizzard challenged Valve's right to use the title DOTA 2 as the title of its MOBA game.

The case was brought to the attention of the US Patent and Trademark Office’s Trial and Appeal Board by Blizzard where it sought to challenge Valve’s right to trademark the word DOTA.

"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 Gabe Newell, president and co-founder of Valve. "We both want to focus on the things our fans care about, creating and shipping great games for our communities."

Under the agreement, Blizzard will preserve noncommercial use of DOTA for its community "with regard to player-created maps for Warcraft III and StarCraft II."

The companies do not plan to discuss the terms of the agreement beyond today's announcement.