Valve still working on DotA project

By Tom Bramwell Published 10 August, 2010

Actor blurts confirmation on Twitter.

Duke Nukem voice actor Jon St. John has tweeted something about the Defense of the Ancients project thought to be under way at Valve Software.

"Had a great time in Seattle last week recording for DotA. The guys at Valve Software are awesome!" St. John tweeted (thanks MTV), before later deleting the message.

Last year IceFrog, the pseudonymous developer responsible for updating the famous Warcraft III modification Defense of the Ancients, was hired by Valve and promised it would be "great news for DotA fans".

"I am now leading a team at Valve!" IceFrog wrote at the time. "I finally have all the resources needed to do some very exciting stuff that you guys will love. I look forward to revealing more specific details when the time is right."

The time obviously isn't right yet, then, although IceFrog continues to update the original WarCraft III modification, with the most recent version - 6.68 - posted at the end of July this year.

Defense of the Ancients combines elements of role-playing games and tower defence to create a new kind of real-time strategy. The objective for each team is to take down their adversaries' heavily-guarded Ancients using a mixture of Hero units and AI-controlled fighters, levelling up and buying stuff on the way.

The scenario has proved so popular that it's formed the basis of various eSports competitions, and helped inspire the likes of Gas Powered Games' Demigod and Riot Games' excellent League of Legends.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000. Follow him on Twitter.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (17) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • mingster #1 2 years ago

    hmm intereresting.
    You would have though Blizzard would have hired him not Valve.

  • Alf-Life #2 2 years ago

    Strange that all these voice actors are fucking up games announcements on Twitter lately.

  • Toothball #3 2 years ago

    Tower defence? Bleh.

  • Scopeh #4 2 years ago

    So hes making DotA 2.0 minus all the WoW heroes and stuff.....yes this will be fail then.

  • Alf-Life #5 2 years ago

    Will it be free like Alien Swarm? :)

    I approve. :D

    Edit: Actually, I think Valve should've given Alien Swarm away with, I dunno, L4D3 or Portal2 pre-orders... such a fun little game.
    Edited by Alf-Life at 10/08/10 @ 10:27

  • Shinetop #6 2 years ago

    Hey, you know what would be a crazy idea? Working on Episode 3 and letting us know how that is going.

  • Makikou #7 2 years ago

    Hell yeah!

  • cw- #8 2 years ago

    @Shinetop ... they clearly have more than one dev team, making it easy for them to be able to work on more than one project at a time ;)

    They'll tell us about Ep3 when they're ready ... and when they do, I'll maybe get round to finishing Ep2 :p

  • Squire #9 2 years ago

    Thought Heroes of Newerth would have gotten a mention!

  • Shinetop #10 2 years ago

    If they're not telling us about it because they're 'not ready', then that's worrying. It was in development in tandem with episode 2, and episode 2 came out three years ago. If you're not ready to share even the slightest glimmer after four or so years, you'll never be ready.
    Edited by Shinetop at 10/08/10 @ 11:23

  • Sunyavadin #11 2 years ago

    I expect a lawsuit from Activision in the near future...

    "Oh, it may be an originl IP but it used our technology in development -AND WE NEED MORE MONEY DAMMIT!"

  • dog #12 2 years ago

    @shinetop : yeah, you're right, valve are complete amateurs at game development and really don't know what they're doing...

    if valve don't want to tell you what they're doing, and don't want to show what they've done then that really is up to them... as long as they keep up the excellent quality of games they do release thats enough for me....

  • Frenzie #13 2 years ago

    Just to echo Squire:

    A HoN review is way overdue! It would be my preferred DotA clone, and certainly a rival to League of Legends in terms of fanbase (I... think. There tends to be about 20K-30K players connected online on weekends!).

  • pbz #14 2 years ago

    This site never gives any love to HoN... which sucks as its an awesome game!

  • Shinetop #15 2 years ago

    @dog: Nice strawman.

  • Drool #16 2 years ago

    And the game closest to DotA gameplay-wise and e-sports wise (even bumped DotA away at Dreamhack) goes unmentioned. Oh I love how eurogamer is following gametrailers into the group of general complete PC-ignorance.

  • Dr.Frappers #17 2 years ago

    I know the argument with HL Ep3 - it'll be worth the wait, Valve take their time to make quality..they release it when they release it - i was always with this attitude as well for HL Ep 3 up to recently.

    As much as a HL fan i am (been playing it for 6 years) i've now started to lose interest in HL Ep 3 - not down to impatience, but sadly just losing interest. Dunno why. I know Valve don't owe anyone anything but for me a little tit bit or teaser to titilate my interest again would go a long, long way....
    Edited by Dr.Frappers at 10/08/10 @ 19:00