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Alleged Valve employee speaks out on DotA co-developer
An alleged Valve employee seeking to air grievances with his employer and one specific employee has taken to an anonymous blog titled "The Truth About IceFrog." In it, the person -- supposedly working on "an unrelated project" from "IceFrog" -- describes not just a poor working environment with the Defense of the Ancients co-developer (whose real name is said to be Abdul Ismail), but also details "something fishy" regarding his past. Though "IceFrog" apparently told colleagues and Valve execs he never worked at S2 Games -- developers of Heroes of Newerth, a DotA clone -- a handful of online evidence suggests he did at one point (DotA co-developer Steve "Pendragon" Mescon even outright states as much). Furthermore, the anonymous blogger likens "IceFrog's" actions to being "the CEO of McDonald's (DOTA) looking for a job at Burger King (Riot Games), then working for Fatburger (S2 Games), then quitting and going to work for Wendy's (Valve) but outright lying to Wendy's (Valve) of involvement with ANY previous employer," adding, "In the corporate world, this would be the equivalent of stealing trade secrets." As announced this morning, "IceFrog" is currently working on Dota 2 for Valve. When we contacted S2 Games to confirm whether or not a man named Abdul Ismail or "IceFrog" ever worked there, we were repeatedly told, "No comment." Valve representatives didn't mince words, saying only, "It's fake," while League of Legends developer Riot Games offered, "At no time did Abdul Ismail, or anyone known as 'IceFrog,' work at or for Riot Games in any capacity." Now if you don't mind us, we can't fight the sudden urge for a fast food burger. If you've got first-hand knowledge regarding any of the accusations, feel free to drop us a line.
GDC Online Award winners announced, League of Legends wins big
Last night in Austin, Texas, the creators of some of this year's biggest and boldest online games were honored during the Game Developer's Choice Online awards ceremony. In particular, Riot Games and its heavyweight debut title, League of Legends, took home half of the awards up for grabs, including Best Online Technology, the Audience Award and Best New Online Game. It also took home "Best Game With a Title That Reads 'LOL' as an Acronym," but that's not ... a real thing. That's a thing we made up, just now. Check out the real list of real winners after the jump.
Riot Games counter-files for DotA trademark
The Defense of the Ancients trademark recently filed by Valve is being challenged. Riot Games, the creator of the free-to-play DotA clone League of Legends, has apparently counter-filed, claiming that the trademark should be held by DotA Allstars creators Steve "Guinsoo" Feak and Steve "Pendragon" Mescon, who later worked with Riot on LoL. The pair filed for the trademark themselves "to protect the work that [original DotA creator] Eul, Guinsoo and dozens of other modders have done to create the game," Pendragon told Joystiq via email. He added that, "if we were to obtain the trademark, we would keep the game and the DotA name freely available to the mod community." Valve still hasn't returned multiple requests for comment, but of course DotA's most recent author, Icefrog, now works for the company on a project that will "excite " DotA fans, and as long ago as 2008 was reportedly shopping around a full-scale version of the popular mod. Pendragon tells PC Gamer that he'd prefer no one owned the trademark to DotA, but it seems that if Valve is planning to take the name for its own title, Guinsoo and Pendragon will fight for it.
Preview: League of Legends, Season One
Riot Games' League of Legends has been winning accolades and fans since it released last year for a few different reasons. It's a highly polished version of Defense of the Ancients, the company has supported the game with continuous updates and new content, and oh yeah -- it's a free-to-play title. Lately, Riot has been working on a major update they're calling "Season One," designed to make the game a little more compatible with competitive play, as well as implement some of the most requested features for the game. The update should be out within a few weeks, they told us, but on the floor of E3, we got to see some of the new tweaks in action. %Gallery-95725%
Hands-on: League of Legends for the Mac
Defense of the Ancients is one of the most interesting stories in all of gaming -- it was originally a player-created mod for the Warcraft III real-time strategy game, and it completely revamped the RTS game into a RPG/hack-and-slash mashup, where the player controlled a champion character that fought to turn the tide of battle on a player-vs-player map. The mod proved so popular that game companies are now creating their own official versions of it, and League of Legends is one of those -- a "DotA"-style mix of hack-and-slash gameplay combined with a few RTS elements created by Riot Games. "LoL," as players are calling it, actually has the best pedigree of all the DotA clones -- two of the mods' designers were (and still are) involved in the games' development. Now LoL is coming to the Mac -- Riot Games invited me to come and see the game this week running natively on their MacBook Pro. The game uses a free to play model, so if you're running Boot Camp, you can go and download it right now and play to your heart's content. But Riot is convinced that "there's millions of gamers out there" who want to run their game natively, and so sometime later this year, it'll be available in OS X. I got to check out the game on official Apple hardware, ask them if they had any problems porting it over, and poke them a little bit about how RTS games might work on the iPad. Hit the link below to read on.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: League of Legends
Being a giant, beloved video game blog has its downsides. For example, we sometimes neglect to give independent developers our coverage love (or loverage, if you will) as we get caught up in AAA, AAAA or the rare quintuple-A titles. To remedy that, we're giving indies the chance to create their own loverage and sell you, the fans, on their studios and products. This week we talk with Riot Games co-founder and president Marc Merrill about how he and his team turned their passion for a Warcraft III mod into a full-fledged game. How did your company get started? The idea to create League of Legends and open Riot Games both started around the end of 2005. We had been playing DotA (Defense of the Ancients, a user-created mod of a popular Warcraft III map) and been very active in the community for a while and believed that the gameplay was so fun and innovative that it represented the spawning of a new genre and deserved to be its own professional game with significantly enhanced features. Riot's CEO Brandon Beck and I co-founded Riot and partnered with some of the key creative minds behind the creation of DotA-Allstars – Steve "Guinsoo" Feak and Steve "Pendragon" Mescon to accomplish this mission – and League of Legends was born. It took almost a year to get Riot off the ground and open our initial office in September of 2006, which is really when we began to build the team to start on development.
What's in a Name: Riot Games
We've had a good time with the League of Legends beta, so we asked the guys at Riot Games how they came up with their name, as well as the title for their spiritual DotA successor. On Riot Games: "We chose the name Riot Games because we thought it sounded a lot cooler than the other names that we came up with and it pretty accurately reflects the image we want to portray – we're a bunch of young guys who work hard, play hard and love to have fun. And yeah, the domain was available for a reasonable price ..." On League of Legends: "We came up with League of Legends because we believe it accurately characterizes the diversity of characters in the game and sounds 'epic.' Everyone wants to know if we picked the acronym on purpose ... we're always surprised people need to even ask that question – of course we did! -- Marc C. Merrill, President of Riot Games Liked this story? Be sure to check out the What's In A Name archives.
See League of Legends in action
Like any self-respecting nerd who spent time with Defense of the Ancients in their youth, we can't wait to get our mouse finger on Riot Games' League of Legends. If you're still on the fence about this action/RTS/RPG hybrid (or are just now hearing about it) allow the above video to educate you.Though the gameplay looks good, what we can't so heartily endorse is the video's dialogue. "Now, you may be asking yourself: 'What exactly is a MOBA?'" Really, guys? That's the "A" material?[Update: Andrew reminds us of a very important fact we neglected to mention: League of Legends will be totally free to play. In fact, you'll only be spending cash if you want to customize the look of your character.]
DotA devs reveal League of Legends: Clash of Fates
We hope at least a few of you are old enough to remember Defense of the Ancients, the very best mod for Warcraft 3, which allowed you to pit two forces of champions from the series against each other. Now some of the team from the mod have revealed their next project: League of Legends: Clash of Fates, a session-based action-strategy game that will have some of the persistent elements of an MMO. You can see the first trailer released by newly-formed Riot Games above.There's not a whole lot of info on the game available at the moment, but you can be one of the first to get a closer look by signing up for next year's beta right here.
