Dota 2 is played in discrete matches involving two teams of five players, each of which occupies a stronghold at a corner of the map. Each stronghold contains a building called the "Ancient", which the opposite team must destroy to win the match. Each player controls a Hero Character and focuses on Leveling Up, collecting gold, acquiring items and fighting against the other team to achieve victory.
Development of Dota 2 began in 2009, when the developer of the DotA mod, Ice Frog, was hired by Valve as lead designer. Dota 2 was praised by critics for its gameplay, production quality and faithfulness to its predecessor. However, the game was criticized for its steep learning curve and inhospitable community. Dota 2 has become the most actively played game on Steam, with daily peaks of over 800,000 concurrent players.
Origins
The earliest version of Dota emerged in 2003, with the release of the custom Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos mod called Defense of the Ancients (DotA), which was created and updated by the pseudonymous designer "Eul".After Blizzard Entertainment released the expansion pack The Frozen Throne in 2003, clones of the DotA mod competed for popularity, with DotA: Allstars by Steve "Guinsoo" Feak being the most popular.With the assistance of his friend, Steve "Pendragon" Mescon, Feak created the official DotA community website dota-allstars.com and formed a holding company for it called DotA-Allstars, LLC. When Feak retired from developing DotA in 2005, a friend, under the pseudonym "IceFrog", took his place. The popularity of DotA increased significantly; it became one of the most popular mods in the world, and, by 2008, a prominent electronic sports title. In May 2009, IceFrog and Mescon had a falling out, prompting the latter to create a new official community at playdota.com.Concept
According to Valve Corporation managing director Gabe Newell, the company's investment in Defense of the Ancients began when several veteran employees— including Team Fortress designer Robin Walker, programmer Adrian Finol and project manager Erik Johnson- became interested in the mod and attempted to play it competitively. They began to correspond with IceFrog about his long-term plans for the mod.The email conversations culminated in Erik Johnson offering IceFrog a tour of the company, after which he was hired to develop a sequel. The first public notification regarding the development of the game was a post on IceFrog's blog on October 5, 2009, in which he disclosed that he would be leading a team at Valve.No further word was given until Dota 2 was officially announced on October 13, 2010, when the website of Game Informer revealed a general synopsis of the game and its development.The resultant surge of traffic crashed Game Informer 's servers.With Valve's acquisition of the franchise, the company adopted the term "Dota", which derives from the original mod's acronym for "Defense of the Ancients". Erik Johnson explained that this was for the reason that the term "Dota" refers to a concept, rather than an acronym.Shortly after a questions and answers session by IceFrog about the new game, Valve filed a trademark claim.At Gamescom 2011, Gabe Newell said that the trademark was a necessary measure for developing a sequel with the already identifiable brand name.Steve Feak and Steve Mescon expressed their concern that Valve did not have the right to trademark the Dota name, which they believed was a community asset. They filed an opposing trademark for "DOTA" on behalf of DotA-Allstars, LLC, then a subsidiary of their employer, Riot Games, on August 9, 2010.Rob Pardo, the executive vice president of Blizzard Entertainment, expressed a similar concern, explaining his perspective that the DotA name was an asset of their game's community. Blizzard acquired DotA-Allstars, LLC from Riot Games and filed an opposition against Valve in November 2011, citing Blizzard's ownership of both the Warcraft III World Editor and DotA-Allstars, LLC as proper claims to the franchise. On May 11, 2012, Blizzard and Valve announced that the dispute had been settled, with Valve retaining the commercial franchising rights to the term "Dota", while non-commercial usage of the name could still be utilized.
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