Blizzard & Valve reach agreement

Two giants of PC gaming, Blizzard and Valve, have come to a mutually agreeable compromise over the proposed naming of Valve's upcoming RTS, DOTA 2.

The disagreement came after Valve revealed they had hired one of the modders who created DotA (Defense of the Ancients), and were working on DOTA 2.

DotA is an incredibly popular fan-made mod for Warcraft 3, that sees two teams of heroes fight it out in tense and complex battles. Blizzard took exception to Valve working on the title; they had been working hard on Blizzard DOTA.

The two companies have agreed that Valve will continue to use the name DOTA, though Blizzard can still use the phrase in their non-comercial community literature. Blizzard's offering will now carry the name of Blizzard Allstars.

Blizzard's Rob Pardo said: ""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."

He then added: "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."

Valve head Gabe Newell then added: "We're pleased that we could come to an agreement with Blizzard without drawing things out in a way that would benefit no one. We both want to focus on the things our fans care about, creating and shipping great games for our communities."