Valve Trademarks DotA, Fueling Reports Of RTS Title

Trademark sleuth website Superannuation reports that Valve has filed a trademark application with the US Patent and Trademark office for "DotA". The abbreviated title refers to Defense of the Ancients, a popular mod for Blizzard's strategy game Warcraft III, which has continued to breathe new life into the title since its 2002 release. The trademark application covers "electronic game software", "computer game software", and "video game software". UK gaming news website CVG also caught a hint about the release from voice actor Jon St. John, who announced on his Twitter that he had worked on Valve's DotA. His tweet read, "Had a great time in Seattle last week recording for DotA. The guys at Valve Software are awesome," and was up only briefly before being removed. DotA lead developer IceFrog joined Valve in late 2009, saying in a Q&A on his site a few days before that his goal and top priority in the future was to "solve the surrounding issues that affected the DotA experience in order to allow it to reach new heights". IceFrog inherited the DotA project in 2005 from creator Steve "Guinsoo" Feak, who went on to work for Riot Games on League of Legends: Clash of Fates, which is in much the same vein as DotA. Defense of the Ancients is a custom scenario for Warcraft III based on the StarCraft map "Aeon of Strife". It challenges the player to destroy the opponents' Ancients by making use of heavily guarded fortresses on opposite ends of the map. DotA has been featured at many worldwide tournaments, including BlizzCon and the Asian World Cyber Games.