League of Legends might be the biggest MOBA game going right now, but it wasn’t the first to adopt the unique stylings of the genre – and YouTube giant Felix ‘PewDiePie’ Kjellberg has laid out his allegiance with the multiplayer game’s predecessor and biggest rival. Speaking on the Trash Taste podcast, the Swedish YouTuber declared his love for Dota, insisting that League players “owe everything to Dota.”
Asked by host Connor ‘CDawgVA’ Colquhoun whether he played much Halo “back in the day,” Kjellberg responds that he and his friends would play Dota – presumably referring to the game in its original form as Warcraft 3 mod ‘Defense of the Ancients,’ before it was picked up by Valve and turned into the Dota 2 we know today. While many consider StarCraft custom map Aeon of Strife the first hint of a MOBA, Defense of the Ancients is generally accepted as the defining starting point of the genre.
Upon learning that all three of the Trash Taste hosts are League players, PewDiePie exclaims an exaggerated “F*** you!” and throws his head back with a cheeky smile. “You owe everything to Dota,” he says with a grin, “League wouldn’t exist without Dota.” Connor retorts, implying that the original Dota was a prototype that was ‘fixed’ by the release of League of Legends, to which Pewds says, “But it had soul!”
Kjellberg explains how much he loved Dota in his younger days,saying that “in Sweden, we would go to net cafés and we would just play that, yelling at each other.” He adds that he considered opening a net café in the UK after moving there to help bring the experience of local network play to the youth of Britain.
PewDiePie certainly isn’t the only notable Swede who was entranced by the allure of Dota LAN parties in the 2000s – chart-topping Swedish DJ Jonas ‘Basshunter’ Altberg famously released a track in which he sung about sitting in dark rooms on Ventrilo (a voice chat service) and playing Dota with his friends.
You can watch Kjellberg’s discussion about League and Dota as part of the Trash Taste podcast, beginning around the 1:26:10 mark:
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