Remember Prey for the Gods? You know, that third-person game that looked similar to Shadow of the Colossus? Well it appears that the team had to slightly change its title due to a trademark opposition from Bethesda/Zenimax.
As No Matter Studios claimed, it was easier to slightly change the game’s name. While the team could have fought this, something like a trademark opposition can be long and depending on how far someone wants to fight it can be very expensive.
“We didn’t want to spend our precious Kickstarter funds, nor did we want to have to ask for additional funds to fight this in court. Using backer money towards something that doesn’t go towards the development or backer rewards felt horrible to us. Even if we did win we’d have to spend a solid chunk of our funds and in our opinion it wasn’t worth it.”
As such, the game will be now called Praey for Gods.
No Matter Studios concluded:
“Unfortunately, Zenimax chose to oppose our mark, as they felt both were too similar to their mark “Prey”. While we disagree with their opposition we were able to come to an agreement.
It was something that kept me up many nights, and no doubt shifted our focus from our game frequently. Worrying about the outcome if we went to trial, if we’d lose our fans or walk away from the mark and still potentially get sued for millions on trademark infringement. This is really something no starting company should have to deal with let alone a tiny team of 3. So the fact that we came out the other end intact still developing the game was a win. One that will no doubt shape our company moving forward.”
Whether this was a “justified” move from Bethesda/Zenimax remains to be seen. Yes, Bethesda needs to protect its title, however it was obvious – at least to most of us – that PREY and Prey for the Gods had nothing in common.
In fact, this whole thing reminded us of what happened with The Banner Saga and Candy Crush Saga. You can easily see the similarities between these two stories, right? And while Stoic Studio was able to win that battle, it appears that No Matter Studios could not.
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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retarded bethesta as always same with cd project
What has CD Project Red done that compares to this?
they recently gained ownership of the word “cyberpunk” which is bullshit bc 1 company cant own an entire subculture.
What? They have not gained ownership of the word, they have gained the rights to use it in media branding so that someone doesn’t attempt to coast off their brand by selling something like “Cyberpunk 3037”. They did it for defensive means.
That’s not the same as the Prey owners messing with a game called Prey For The Gods, there is no brand confusion there, they’re just morons with an itchy trigger finger.
Amazing that CDPR is being shat on before even doing anything, they were forced to preemptively apologize because people started hysteria and misinformation.
I don’t know even if you care Haz-Matt and Akirascreaming, but THEY DIDN’T TRADEMARKED CYBERPUNK WORD! Cyberpunk as in Cyberpunk 2020/2077 was already a roleplaying game, and they trademarked that game. NOT THE ENTIRE GENRE!
Trademarked cyberpunk word
no, not even close.
To be fair they trademarked the “word” years ago, it’s just that people only recently found out. As far as we know they haven’t been abusing their trademark, so it’s slightly different circumstances.
Though, yeah, that could very easily change one day, of course.
no young Zatara, they didn’t trademarked the “word”, they only trademarked the Cyberpunk 2020/2077 game.
They trademarked “Cyberpunk” specifically. Also, note my use of quotations, for next time, thanks.
Regardless, this is straight from CDPR themselves, & should help clarify your confusions on this matter;
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ff2d2bf723ad994a166916388c734ed9212b5596fb65b164f5f2eeb426e7c5e9.jpg
At this point Bethesda/Zenimax are just being stupid effs. Like No Matter Studios were going to intentionally mislead people to buy their game as the new Prey game.
Gaijin Entertainment (Wings of Prey) could threaten to sue Bethesda, then?
Trademark /=/ owning a word.
The title “Prey for the gods” is completely different to “Prey”.
Tell that to the “REACTS” guys.
Oh, & Sky (UK). They tried to sue over No Man’s Sky, with the entire debacle going on for 3 years before they finally lost – true story. Like, seriously, Hello Games has done a lot of sh*t wrong, absolutely, but when you purposefully name your company “Sky”, you have zero ground to stand on in terms of “trademark infringement” in regards to the use of that word, as far as I’m concerned.
you can’t own a word as a Trade Mark.
Just like you can’t own a Harmonic Progression in Music.
you can however own two words like StarWars but not Star or Wars.
Zenimax are morons with suites.
Zenimax Litigator Death Squads at it again. Same ridiculous bullsh*t as Scrolls and Fallout Fortress.
I… prey… stupidity is not as contagious as copyright enforcement…
* stupid laws forcing action in order to not lose said copyright *
Since when the word ”Prey” is exclusive to Bethesda?
It’s like those retarded ppl from the Candy Crash Casa sueing the Banner Saga.
This is ridiculous.
Their legal team must smoke crack.
No, it’s a troll tactic that they’ve used before (see: ZeniMax vs. InterPlay, Notch’s “Scrolls” game, etc.); they’re hoping to either bankrupt the opposition, or just force them to settle by wearing them out.
It’s a combination of trolling & bullying, which is technically completely legal, unfortunately.
Didn’t their derpy legal team try to trademark the word ‘scrolls’ a few years back and threatened devs that had that word in their games?
They did, they threatened Notch & his “Scrolls” game. Actually, did they just threaten, or did they file suits against him? I forget.
With the level of inteligence I come across these days, some may be mislead into buying “Prey for the gods” thinking its prey
LOL; who wants to support a company that likes to intimidate indie companies?
More bullying behaviour from the so-called triple-A games industry. Disgusting.
Is this suppsoed to make me want to buy any games associated with Zenimax ? This is petty and the work of a bully. All it makes me want to do is blacklist any games with anything to do with Zenimax which sadly I can think of multiple other reasons to already blacklist them.
Let’s hope they don’t make game called “a” otherwise they are gonna sue any title with “a” in it.
This is so stupid. There is huge difference between Prey and Prey for the gods. Bathesda/Zenimax is being over sensitive.