Who is IceFrog?
Esports Maybe is now Esports in a Nutshell

Mark Register explains it all:
IceFrog is a game designer, known for being the longest-serving and current developer of the Warcraft III custom map Defense of the Ancients. He is currently employed by Valve Corporation as the lead designer for Dota 2, the stand-alone sequel to the original scenario, a position for which he was hired in 2009.[1] IceFrog's involvement with DotA began in 2005, when he inherited the reins of the dominant variant entitled DotA Allstars from Steve "Guinsoo" Feak.[2] IceFrog is noted for his continued anonymity, having never publicly disclosed his actual name.[3] He did however reveal that he was 25 years old on his blog on February 3, 2009.

Abdul Ismail IceFrog is the hidden genius behind the perfectly balanced chaotic masterpiece Dota 2
Forged in the depths of the Defense of the Ancients Allstars forum is where our hero’s journey begins
Steve Feak Guinsoo was leading the charge of developing DotA:Allstars in 2004 with a team of 12 developers using community feedback from the Allstar forum created by Steve Mescon Pendragon when Steve Feak decided to step back as the lead developer, recognized IceFrog’s great talent, and put him in charge of development in 2005
It’s at this time DotA Allstars and the forum lived its golden age under IceFrog’s reign and DotA Allstars became a finely tuned masterpiece and was adopted by esport tournaments all over the world
Larger studios started to take notice of this DotA movement that included over a million active players in a game that was an exclusive club with a high barrier of entry due to complex gameplay and no explanation of how things worked except through digging through their deep dark forums
DotA also had a looming inherent problem, it was built on Blizzard’s game engine and no one officially owned the game
Big studios like Valve, Riot, and S2 Games saw the opportunity to make their version of DotA on their source engine so they could cash in on this massive movement and turn it into a golden goose
These companies started poaching DotA Allstar figureheads like Eul, Steve Feak, Steve Mescon, and IceFrog
Most joined Riot, but IceFrog shopped around doing some work with S2 Gaming to help create Heroes of Newerth but didn’t find what he was looking for: full autonomy and control over the development of DotA Allstars on top of its own dedicated source engine to create the game that his legion of purist fans wanted desperately
He pitched himself to Riot but one they had $15MM worth of investors to answer to and that wasn’t the direction they wanted to go in, they only wanted to take the best parts of DotA and have a democratic team of people working on it
Valve on the other hand welcomed IceFrog with open arms and put him in complete control of development and gave him the staff and budget to build his dream machine which he did when they launched Dota 2 Beta in 2011 and officially in 2013
IceFrog continues to run as Dota 2’s well loved dictator fusing his DNA into the game’s balanced chaos that makes it so unique
Like Apple, Valve’s Dota 2 will live on after their leader leaves but will never be the same

Host: Mark Register

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