Valve Trademarks 'DOTA' 141
An anonymous reader tips news that Valve Software has filed a trademark claim for the term "DOTA," fueling speculation that the company will soon reveal a new Defense of the Ancients game. Voice actor John St. John recently said he was recording for such a game in a post to Twitter. The tweet was subsequently deleted. Last year Valve hired 'Icefrog,' lead developer for the original DotA mod.
Re:Business model (Score:5, Informative)
It doesn't surprise me in the least,
Summary is wrong, as usual (Score:5, Informative)
Icefrog is NOT the original developer. I don't know where that nonsense keeps coming from.
The original developer is named Eul, and he made it way back before The Frozen Throne came out. He then stopped supporting it. Guinsoo then made DotA Allstars. Icefrog took that over at version 6, and is the current maintainer.
I don't know how you go from "second maintainer of a remake" to "original author", but it's amazing how fast that spread around the Internet.
Name (Score:4, Informative)
It's Jon St. John [wikipedia.org], not John St. John.
Re:Summary is wrong, as usual (Score:3, Informative)
I would like to add that genre is not "DOTA", it is "AoS".
The original map that created these types of custom games was called "Aeon of Strife". It is a starcraft custom map.
Re:Ok but... (Score:5, Informative)
What about Half Life? Is this franchise dead or something?
I doubt it, they are supposedly working on the last Episode, but I'm not shocked that it is taking so long. Remember, whatever happens in the last episode, it sets the stage for the next game. You don't want to kill off people who would be handy later on. The franchise is still very popular, very profitable, and the highest ranking games on Metacritic's website. The rumors of the franchise's death have been greatly exaggerated.
They are talking about making the last episode much scarier, which I think is the right thing to do. I remember the first Half-life literally giving me chill bumps, and making me jump with the head crabs and other assorted critters. The last interview that Gabe gave on it (that I am aware of) was a few months ago: http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2010/03/26/valve-wants-their-next-half-life-to-scare-you/ [mtv.com]
Re:Summary is wrong, as usual (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Ok but... (Score:2, Informative)
You do realise that Valve have got more than 1 studio, right?
It's a seperat studio making Half-life.
Re:I'm still stuck with yesterday's story (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Alternative to "Citation needed"? (Score:3, Informative)
Patent law
is not under discussion; trademark law is. I would imagine that regular Slashdot readers are far more familiar with patent and copyright law than with trademark law, simply because far more Slashdot stories have been about the use of patent and copyright law than about the use of trademark law.
its not that hard to say, "I couldn't find what you were talking about. I did searches for x, y, and z. Can you please provide a reference of some kind?"
Is it also characteristic of a douche bag to say "I did a search for x, but the vast majority of Google's search results had their full text behind the Springer, Wiley, or Elsevier paywall, and I am not willing to pay $30 per article just to participate in a Slashdot discussion"?
Re:How was this even found? (Score:3, Informative)
USPTO has a search engine, which if you know enough about how they categorize everything, you can find a lot of stuff in there. They even do neat things like categorize the shapes of logos (eg 26.19.01 - Spheres (geometric)).
Mostly, though, the engine is a flaming pile of shit, driven largely by sessions that make it next to impossible to figure out how to link to results. Even if you find your specific trademark, the search results page link to the trademark document uses your session ID. In fact, you can't even link to the search page itself (anyone following it gets an invalid session error), you'll have to go through the index page so it can create a session for you.
http://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/index.jsp [uspto.gov]