Filipino Village Bans Dota After Multiple Murders

A small village in the Philippines will no longer allow residents to play Defense of the Ancients following a series of violent incidents that culminated in two deadly stabbings.



As reported by the Filipino news site Inquirer.net, the village of Salawag chose to enact this Dota ban after government officials met with computer cafe owners and determined that the game was making their children more violent. In November, two teenagers were stabbed and killed after a fight involving the game, Salawag’s village chief told Inquirer.net.

Defense of the Ancients, a Warcraft III mod, remains popular in the Philippines even as it has been trumped by popular successors like Dota 2 and League of Legends in North America and Europe.

“Dota‘s a really big game here in the Philippines, partly because of the presence of Internet cafes around almost every city and provincial district,” says a Filipino Kotaku reader who asked that we not use his name. “Unfortunately, based on my personal observations, it seems that a lot of players here can be intense (really, to say the least).”

Intense enough that at least one small village felt the need to ban Dota completely. Here’s the resolution they passed earlier this month: