The Prey for the Gods situation made the rounds on the Web, pretty much gathering unanimous disdain for Bethesda's decision to enforce their trademark on little indie team No Matter Studios.
Bethesda's Vice President of PR & Marketing, Pete Hines, offered several interesting replies on the matter via Twitter in the last few hours. To begin with, he stated that the company didn't have much of a choice as they could have risked losing the Prey trademark otherwise. He also suggested that No Matter Studios didn't listen to Bethesda or even their own lawyer when they filed the trademark.
We really didn’t have much of a choice. If we don’t oppose the mark, we risk losing our Prey trademark. We don't really have a choice.
— Pete Hines (@DCDeacon) May 3, 2017
Cool has nothing to do with it. Its how trademark law works. You protect your mark or lose it. You don't really have a choice.
— Pete Hines (@DCDeacon) May 3, 2017
because they didn't listen to anything we said before now, including their own trademark lawyer(s) that filed for the trademark.
— Pete Hines (@DCDeacon) May 4, 2017
That's when things got really interesting. According to Hines, Bethesda reached out to the Prey for the Gods team almost two years ago, before their (successful) Kickstarter campaign. Which begs the question: why did they bring it up only just now, on Arkane's Prey launch day?
we first reached out to them about this two years ago. we've made plenty of effort
— Pete Hines (@DCDeacon) May 4, 2017
i think you probably assume they are just now hearing from us and this is the only thing we've tried. none of that is true.
— Pete Hines (@DCDeacon) May 4, 2017
No it's not. We reached out in Nov 2015. We tried talking to them. Well before their KS.
— Pete Hines (@DCDeacon) May 4, 2017
You mean why have they only brought it up now? The week we are launching Prey? That's a good question.
— Pete Hines (@DCDeacon) May 4, 2017
I suppose the folks at No Matter Studios may want to clarify on this specific issue. In the meantime, Hines also suggested that Bethesda had to change the name to games or DLCs several times due to the very same regulations.
i enjoy legal stuff as much as i enjoy politics. the number of times we've had to change the name of a game/dlc we had come up w is insane.
— Pete Hines (@DCDeacon) May 4, 2017
And they could have used a name that didn't infringe on our mark like we have 1000 times when we came up w something another company 'marked
— Pete Hines (@DCDeacon) May 4, 2017
Arkane's Prey is available now on PC (where it's a fine port), PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, and you shouldn't overlook it due to all these shenanigans.
Praey for the Gods, on the other hand, should enter Closed Alpha testing soon (which is when Kickstarter backers will first get their hands on the work-in-progress build). We're very much looking forward to this game, too, so stay tuned on Wccftech for more coverage.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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