'Blizzard All-Stars' is the new name for 'Blizzard DOTA,' Valve retains 'Dota 2'

Blizzard and Valve are agreeing to share the DOTA trademark, the two companies announced today. Though only one of them is renaming their game.

Under the terms of the agreement, Valve, which holds the trademark for the game name, will continue to use it commercially, including for Dota 2, while Blizzard, whose game original spawned the genre, retains noncommercial use of the DOTA name for use in their community, specifically for player-created maps for Warcraft 3 and StarCraft 2.

"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."

Valve president Gabe Newell said he's pleased with the outcome.

"We both want to focus on the things our fans care about, creating and shipping great games for our communities," he said.

Defense of the Ancients or DotA started as an action real-time strategy mod of Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos. The game type has evolved over the years, gaining popularity and spawning a number of spin offs including League of Legends, Heroes of Newerth and, most recently, Dota 2.