Dota

Defense of the Ancients (DotA)

The installment which established the Dota intellectual property was the Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos custom map Defense of the Ancients (DotA). Independently developed and released by the pseudonymous designer Eul in 2003, it was inspired by Aeon of Strife, a multiplayer StarCraft map.^[8] Before every DotA match, up to ten players are organized into two teams called the Scourge and the Sentinel—inspired by the factions from Warcraft lore—with the former in the northeast corner and the latter in the southwest corner of a nearly-symmetrical map. Using one of several game modes, the players each choose a single powerful unit called a "hero", who they are granted control of throughout the match. Heroes maintain special tactical advantages, in the way of their statistics, attack, and damage types, as well as abilities that can be learned and enhanced through leveling up from combat. Team coordination and roster composition are considered crucial for a successful match.^[9] The currency of the game is gold, which may be used for purchasing items that may enhance a hero's statistics and provide special abilities. Gold is awarded to players for destroying enemies and in increments on a rolling basis, while also being deducted for the death of one's hero.^[10] Heroes battle alongside weaker computer-controlled infantry units periodically dispatched in waves, who traverse three paths called "lanes", which connect the Scourge and Sentinel bases.^[11][12] Each lane is lined with defensive towers, which are not only more powerful the closer they are to their respective bases, but invulnerable until their predecessors are destroyed. At the center of each base is a central structure called an "Ancient", which is either the World Tree for the Sentinel or the Frozen Throne for the Scourge. To win a match, the enemy's Ancient must be destroyed.^[12]

Dota 2

Valve's interest in the Dota intellectual property began when several veteran employees, including Team Fortress 2 designer Robin Walker and executive Erik Johnson, became fans of the map and wanted to build a modern sequel.^[13] The company corresponded with IceFrog by email about his long-term plans for the project,^[14] and he was subsequently hired to direct a sequel.^[15] IceFrog first announced his new position through his blog in October 2009,^[16] with Dota 2 being officially announced a year later.^[17] Shortly after, Valve filed a trademark claim for the Dota name.^[18] At Gamescom 2011, company president Gabe Newell explained that the trademark was needed to develop a sequel with the already-identifiable brand.^[19] Holding the Dota name to be a community asset, Feak and Mescon filed an opposing trademark for Dota on behalf of DotA-Allstars, LLC (then a subsidiary of Riot Games) in August 2010.^[20] Rob Pardo, the executive vice president of Blizzard Entertainment at the time, similarly stated that the Dota name belonged to the mod'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 name.^[21] The dispute was settled in May 2012, with Valve retaining commercial rights to the Dota trademark, while allowing non-commercial use of the name by third-parties.^[22]

An early goal of the Dota 2 team was the adaptation of Defense of the Ancients's aesthetic style for the Source engine.^[17] The Radiant and Dire factions replaced the Sentinel and Scourge from the map, respectively. Character names, abilities, items, and map design from the map were largely retained, with some changes due to trademarks owned by Blizzard. In the first Q&A session regarding Dota 2, IceFrog explained that the game would build upon the map without making significant changes to its core.^[15] Valve contracted major contributors from the Defense of the Ancients community, including Eul and artist Kendrick Lim, to assist with the sequel.^[23] Following nearly two years of beta testing, Dota 2 was officially released on Steam for Windows on July 9, 2013, and for OS X and Linux on July 18, 2013.^[24][25][26] The game did not launch with every hero from Defense of the Ancients. Instead, the missing ones were added in various post-release updates, with the final one, as well as the first Dota 2 original hero, being added in 2016.^[27][28] Since its release, Dota 2 has been cited as one of the greatest video games of all time.^{[29][30][31][32]} It is also the most lucrative esports game of all time, earning teams and players a total of over US$100 million by June 2017.^[33]

Artifact

Artifact is a digital collectible card game based on Dota 2, developed and published by Valve. The game focuses on online player versus player battles across three boards called lanes. Development began in late 2014, with lead designer Richard Garfield being brought in to help make a digital card game due to his experience with creating the Magic: The Gathering franchise.^[34][35] The game was then announced via a teaser trailer played at The International 2017, a large Dota 2-specific esports tournament organized by Valve.^[36] Artifact was released for Windows, macOS, and Linux in November 2018, with versions planned for Android and iOS.^[37] While its gameplay and drafting mechanics received praise, it was criticized for its high learning curve and monetization model, which some likened to being pay-to-win.^[38][39] The game saw a 95% decline in players within two months of its release, and had fewer than 100 concurrent players by mid-2019.^[40]

Dota Underlords

Dota Underlords is a free-to-play auto battler, a type of chess-like competitive multiplayer strategy video game, developed and published by Valve. The game is based on a Dota 2 community-created game mode called Dota Auto Chess, with journalists noting the parallel modding origins that DotA had from Warcraft III.^[41] It was released in early access in June 2019 for Android, iOS, macOS, Windows, and Linux, with it planned to be officially released in February 2020.^[42][5] One of the many auto battler games that released following the popularity of Dota Auto Chess, critics considered it one of the easiest to get into for newer players of the genre.^[43] In Dota Underlords, where players place characters, known as heroes, on an 8x8 grid-shaped battlefield. After a preparation phase, a team's heroes then automatically fight the opposing team without any further direct input from the player.^[43] A match features up to eight players online who take turns playing against each other in a one-on-one format, with the winner being the final player standing after eliminating all of the opposing players.^[44]