As much as I like Bethesda's work, they really need to get a hold of their lawyers and open up a can of whoop-ass on them. It turns out that Bethesda is now suing Minecraft developer 'Mojang' for 'stealing' the idea of using 'scrolls' in the game. I'm sorry, but what?? First off, I really hope that Bethesda gets the smack-down (yes, I seem to be quoting 'The Rock' today for some reason) from the attending Judge because it's time that software companies 'learned their damn role' (ok, I'm done...honest.) Going around suing each other for using basic concepts such as scrolls isn't going to do anyone any good and it only serves to stifle competition and indy development.
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| Pick on the little guy and you might become the little guy. |
Secondly, Bethesda is really opening up a can of worms here. Do they honestly think that, in the history of gaming (electronic or otherwise), that they have any exclusive rights to the use of 'scrolls' within a fantasy game? At the end of the day, ALL fantasy games owe allegiance to one company and one only:
TSR Incorporated.
What seperates Bethesda from TSR is that TSR was only interested in people enjoying their games rather than chasing down any third-party designer who happened to like what they did and infuse elements into their own creations.
What's more, all rights to TSR were bought by 'Wizards of the Coast' who are now owned wholly by Hasbro Inc. If Bethesda does get anywhere with this stupid legal action, perhaps someone should send Hasbro a little note to see if they would like to make Bethesda their legal plaything for a while.
Old advice but still relevant: Be careful what you wish for; you might just get it.
UPDATE: Techdirt has more information on this issue: apparently, it stems from a new game from Mojang named 'Scroll' and Bethesda, who owns trademark rights to 'The Elder Scrolls' doesn't like it. Again, not much stock in this suit and it reeks of the recent action by Facebook who is currently suing 'Shagbook' for daring to use 'Book' in their name. Are we seriously going to try and trademark the dictionary? Let's hope this falls over before it goes any further.
Hasbro vs. Bethesda (or ZeniMax)... Yeah, that's not going to last long.
ReplyDeleteI miss the days where people were more concerned with what they were producing, than stopping others from using names that vaguely resembles something they made previously. There is a finite amount of words in the dictionary after all - so if we're going to make sure all titles are entirely unique, I'm guessing we're soon going to see names like "Scrotum" as game names, since that's what we got left...