Re:The complete guide to publishing free software video games
by tsimionescu on Friday June 30, 2023 @03:30PM
(#36540870)
Given that League of Legends, Dota 2, and Blizzard's own Heroes of the Storm all share virtually the same map today, and are not engaged in any IP battles over it, I don't see any reason to believe Blizzard owning the original IP of the DOTA mod would have made any difference in terms of blocking the map design from being reused in other games. If anyone could have owned this map design, either Riot or Valve would have already sought to block the others from using it.
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Re:The complete guide to publishing free software video games
by uzerfcwn on Friday June 30, 2023 @04:03PM
(#36541392)
That's really stretching the meaning of "virtually the same map". LoL and Dota 2 maps look similar on the minimap (HotS not so much), but they're drastically different when you start looking at points of interest and juke paths. In contrast, Dota 2 used to have almost exactly the same map as DotA (differences being shops and hero selection, which were changed from ingame units to actual UI menus).
Not to mention that Dota 2 also copied the exact skillsets of heroes and items. Not just likeness, but even most silly bugs that were due to the Warcraft engine.
Edit: Anyways, this is getting sidetracked. My point is that Warcraft 3 was lax with intellectual property for the longest time, and mods like DotA most certainly leveraged that.
Re:The complete guide to publishing free software video games
by tsimionescu on Saturday July 01, 2023 @11:14AM
(#36551002)
Sure, and I am contesting that point by showing that League of legends succeeded in creating a game based on DOTA that didn't need any of the DOTA-related IP. So, while it is true that the DOTA team / Valve from Blizzard's laxness at the time of W3, their succes didn't hinge on it, as Riot proved.