Pendragon confirms Icefrog’s S2/Heroes of Newerth Involvement, takes petty jab at Icefrog; Dota-Allstars.com site is discontinued

Pendragon left a post today on his dota-allstars.com site confirming Icefrog’s involvement with S2 Games.  He also has discontinued the site which was basically a massive forum for DotA players.  The site traffic had been dwindling for over a year since playdota.com (Icefrog’s site) made its debut.

Pendragon’s message (see below) is basically a stroking of his ego combined with a petty jab at Icefrog and a plug for his game, League of Legends (LoL).  He tries to make his two competitors, Icefrog (Dota) and S2 (HoN), look bad while painting himself and his own game (LoL) in a good light.  His spiel: essentially, he and Guinsoo created the “real” Dota successor in LoL, while dishonest upstart Icefrog and S2 designed the ripoff HoN.  He says: “I chose to be transparent and honest about the project that I was working on, and the direction my career was going”,  which is to imply that Icefrog is not.

Whether Icefrog and S2 were involved, while an interesting story, frankly doesn’t matter.  Icefrog and S2 have been dedicated and honorable game designers and can do whatever they want with their money and ideas.  No one can deny the quality of Icefrog’s contributions to the Dota map and no one is making anyone shell out 30 bucks for HoN if they don’t want to (though Pendragon loves pointing out that LoL is “free” except for micro-transactions).  Pendragon tries to sell that S2 and Icefrog are guilty of collusion.  Just because they didn’t tell us something doesn’t mean they lied to us, and if anything, the fact (if it’s true) that S2 consulted with Dota’s developer while designing their own next-generation Dota game only adds credibility to Heroes of Newerth, especially with regard to the whole popular “ripoff” debating point.  Hey, look, Icefrog ripped himself off!  Right.

Anyone above the age of 14 can see through Pendragon’s rhetoric, which sounds like something straight from the Jeff Hunter book of douchery and manipulation.  What a fucking tool.

His message:

Some of you may know me; many of you probably won’t these days. This website was born on October 14th, 2004. It was a mere 2 months after I turned 18, and it was the first website I’d ever made. Guinsoo was the lead developer (before Icefrog), DotA had no competitive scene and maybe 5% of the players that it does today.

In the years that followed, the site turned from a small forum with only 30,000 users to a massive community with over a million visitors every month, a million page views every day, and a staff of over 100 volunteers. It’s been incredible discovering the generosity of individuals who selflessly donate their time to create a positive experience for others.

In the summer of 2008, I met Guinsoo in real life for the first time. He and his boss were in town and they wanted to meet up and go out for a steak, (how could I say no!?). I soon learned that they were working on a game based on DotA, free from all of the limitations of the Warcraft III engine and Battle.net. Several months after meeting them and after several trips to their offices to learn more about the project, I joined the Riot Games team working on League of Legends.

When I first joined the team in September of 2008, my original intent was to work on League of Legends full time and continue to build DotA-Allstars.com into an awesome thriving DotA community after Icefrog’s departure.

While I originally intended to leave this out of this letter, in light of the fact that this information is now out in the open, I think it’s important to set the record straight. Many believe that Icefrog left because I wanted to commercialize, and he did not. In reality – I had learned that Icefrog had been secretly working for S2Games after conducting a series of meetings where he was attempting to sell a full DotA game concept to a number of companies (including Riot). The differences of opinion that we had were merely that I chose to be transparent and honest about the project that I was working on, and the direction my career was going.

After working on and launching LoL, I began to realize that – in addition to having no free time anymore – with LoL available to play I no longer possessed the passion for DotA which once drove me.

The traffic on the website slowly began to decline, settling where it’s at now (about 50% of where it was a year ago), and I recently realized that I had a decision to make. I could either continue to say that I would rebuild the website as a strong DotA community, knowing that my heart wasn’t really in it, or I could archive the site, ending an almost 6 year chapter of my life that I’ve invested thousands of hours into. Ultimately I believe that the right decision here is to not trick myself into thinking that this site will be rebuilt into what it once was, and to shift my full focus and time to my new project, with an eye towards the future.

This website and the DotA community will always hold a special place in my heart. It’s been an amazing experience working with so many wonderful people and gaining so much insight about communities, people, and ultimately myself. There are more people deserving of thanks than I could possibly remember – so rather than leaving anyone out, I’ll simply thank everyone who has volunteered or contributed to this site over the last few years, and everyone who helped make it one of the premier DotA websites in the world.

The website will be offline for the next week or so while the database is moved to its new permanent home where its contents will remain archived and available to the public for the sake of historical preservation.

In the meantime, I hope some of you will join me and over 3 million other players for a game of League of Legends (it’s free!)

Should you wish to contact me, you can reach me at:
AIM: Gippis
MSN: DotA-Allstars@hotmail.com
Email: Pendragon@dota-allstars.com

Sincerely,
Pendragon