Posts Tagged ‘legal goings on’

Descent Reimagining Sol Contingency Foxed

Love will tear us apart again.

Fan remakes and reimaginings are labours of love living on a knife-edge, potentially blooming into a glorious monument to their adoration but knowing that one single letter from the owner could shut everything down at any moment. Sol Contingency has received that letter. It was to be a shiny “reimagining” of Parallax’s splendid six-degrees-of-freedom space shooter Descent in the UDK, but owners Interplay have stopped that. The team say they’ll continue, changing enough to make Sol Contingency their own thing.

But this wasn’t all unrequited love; at one point, Interplay were interested in making Sol Contingency an official Descent game.

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Australian Watchdog Takes Valve To Court Over Refunds

The concerned look of a man about to eat a flag.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages, welcome to another legal goings on industry punch up. This time in the red corner, hailing from Seattle and weighing in at approximately several billion pounds, it’s Valve. Meanwhile, in the blue corner, the challenger Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) seeks to do battle on the basis of “misleading consumer guarantee representations” under the 2011 Australian Consumer Law. Specifically, they’re challenging Valve’s no-refunds refund policy. Valve’s response, in a short statement to IGN from VP of marketing Doug Lombardi, is that they are “making every effort to cooperate with the Australian officials on this matter.” Read on for the details.

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Nobody Wins In The Dictator vs Call of Duty

This was yesterday’s news of course, but it seems too bleakly funny to neglect mentioning here. Former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega is suing Activision from his jail cell, claiming the use of his name and image as a CODBLOPS 2 baddie is unjust and misrepresentative. While his lawyers do note that “Plaintiff was portrayed as an antagonist and portrayed as the culprit of numerous fictional heinous crimes” (as opposed to his all numerous non-fictional heinous crimes)” the nub of the challenge seems to be less hurt feelings and more “creating the false impression that defendants are authorized to use plaintiff’s image and likeness.” In other words, filthy lucre. Figures.
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RPS Feature Magic's gathering anger

Oi, That’s Mine! Wizards of the Coast Sues Cryptozoic

All hail me, the king of photoshop. Bad photoshop. That doesn't use Photoshop.

Uh-oh.

It seems like only almost exactly a month since I was musing on the existence of Hex: Shards of Fate and its similarities to Magic: The Gathering. Well, it turns out that a month before that Wizards of the Coast (or, more accurately, their lawyers) were doing a little more than raising an eyebrow. They’ve gone whole hog, taking Cryptozoic and sub-company Hex Entertainment to court for “copyright, patent and trade dress infringement.” To which the wider internet has responded with a mix of “what do those things mean?” and outrage. Essentially, Wizards believe that Hex is too similar to Magic in the way that is looks, functions and plays to be distinct. This comes down to a number of different factors like whether customers will confuse the two brands as well as whether there’s been wholesale nicking of work. Now, I am not a lawyer, nor should I be, however I’ve dug up a few juicy morsels and am more than happy to throw out an opinion or two, which you’ll find below.

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RPS Feature The Law Won

German Court Rules Against Rights To Resell Steam Games

In a perhaps not too surprising result, the case in Germany brought against Valve that attempted to demonstrate the right to resell Steam games was lost last week. Brought by German consumer group Verbraucherzentrale Bundesverband (vzbv), this was a second attempt to see a court rule that consumers have the right to resell their Steam games. Like you can with any physical gaming product. And for a second time, the courts ruled against it.

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RPS Feature Stoic In The Face Of A Crushing

The Candy Crush Banner Saga Saga: Stoic Speaks Up

This afternoon King – owners of Candy Crush Saga and an ever-increasing percentage of the dictionary – issued a statement defending their actions regarding the news that they had filed an opposition to Stoic’s attempts to trademark “The Banner Saga”. A defence that seems odd in the face of what’s actually happening. Especially as they’re arguably attempting to assert a trademark they don’t actually have. Appearing to believe they are the only company allowed to register games with “saga” in the title, King has exercised this by preventing other studios’ efforts to protect their unique game names with their own trademarks.

Yet in King’s statement (below), they make it clear that they don’t believe that Stoic is trying to profit from a similar name, and say they do not wish to prevent Stoic from using the name. A claim that seems, well, rather peculiar given the circumstances, and their appearing to say something quite different in their Opposition. It’s something Stoic have now told RPS they’re not too pleased about either, stating, “We won’t make a Viking saga without the word Saga, and we don’t appreciate anyone telling us we can’t.”

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RPS Feature The Saga Saga

King ARE Trying To Candy-Crush The Banner Saga

Yesterday the internet was alive with the news about King, owners of Candy Crush Saga, their trademarking of the word “Candy”, and their ensuing threats to other developers who are using the word in their game titles. The response from King was to flap their eyelashes and protest innocence – they were only defending the Earth against evil, not liberally chasing anyone and everyone. About that. We’ve seen the document that shows their attempt to go after The Banner Saga.

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