His involvement with Defense of the Ancients originally began in 2005, when he inherited the reins of the dominant variant entitled DotA Allstars from "Neichus", who himself inherited it from Steve "Guinsoo" Feak.[3]
IceFrog is noted for his continued anonymity, having never publicly disclosed his actual identity.[4][5] In February 2009, IceFrog revealed on his blog that he was 25 years old at the time.[1] In 2010, an anonymous person who claimed to be a Valve employee wrote a blog post titled "The Truth About IceFrog", in which he claims that IceFrog had previously worked secretly on Heroes of Newerth for S2 Games before joining Valve, as well as stating his identity as Abdul Ismail.[6] A court document regarding the ownership of the Dota intellectual property from April 2017 also listed Ismail as the name of IceFrog, as well as reaffirming his pre-Valve work on Heroes of Newerth.[7]
