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It was October 5, 2009 when the DotA (capital A) community knew it was never going to be the same. IceFrog, one of the most influential developers within not only the modding, but video game community, announced that he would be leading a team at Valve Corporation. Nobody knew exactly what he would be doing, but there were strong suspicions it would be something in the same lieu as Valve's acquisition of other mods, such as Counter-Strike and Team Fortress. This was amidst the emergence of stand-alone games inspired by DotA, including Demigod, League of Legends and Heroes of Newerth. At this point, nobody was sure if any games would be able to faithfully capture or at least adapt the excitement of DotA.At the time Valve acquired IceFrog's services and the intellectual property to Dota in 2009, the map was merely seen as a precisely-balanced template for others to emulate and hopefully replace. By most individuals' reckoning, Valve would likely utilize IceFrog's skill to design a video game with uncommon balance that would encapsulate the spirit of DotA, but not be a new iteration of the game itself. When in 2010, it was revealed that Valve was creating a direct translation and sequel to the original map, many were stunned.Now here we stand, four years older and a much different perspective of what is Dota (lowercase A). The original Warcraft III map is legally recognized as Valve's intellectual property, per the outcome of the trademark disputes. When people think of Dota, they think of the iterations of the characters and landscape as it appears in Dota 2, appearing in their stand-alone and full-fledged form. When people consider what is high-paying in esports, it was Dota 2 that put multi-game tournaments with a quarter million dollars to shame by rolling out The International, which stopped the entire scene dead in its tracks.