spekingur

EA being intentionally obscure and blaming the PC gaming favourite, Valve, for lack of EA games on Steam. Bethesda (or Zenimax) suing Mojang/Notch for the name Scrolls of which Zenimax does not hold the trademark for.

Results: EA will lose out on quite a bit of sales if BF3 is a no show on Steam. Their competition with MW3 on the PC will be minimal (because you know that MW3 will be on Steam) and EA will eventually blame it on piracy. They will show us numbers that will be high although some of those numbers will have come about because EA were being "taught a lesson". Bethesda will have problems in future conventions and interviews when showing/talking about Skyrim since someone will always start mentioning them suing Mojang - thus the gaming part of Skyrim will be less mentioned.

Pulled from Wikipedia:

ZeniMax Media was founded in 1999 by Bethesda Softworks founder Christopher Weaver and Robert A. Altman. Weaver's vision was to use Bethesda Softworks as a hybrid-media company which would create cross-media properties for a diverse range of different platforms. Weaver brought Altman on board as CEO, contributing his stock in Bethesda Softworks so that the new shell company, named ZeniMax Media, would be able to obtain funding. Weaver moved to a non-operational role in 2002.

And a bit about the current CEO, Robert Altman (also pulled from Wikipedia):

Altman is a lawyer. He became part of the company BCCI. During his time there he was accused of helping the business buy an American bank and lying to US regulators about it. In 1992, he was indicted for eight felony charges in New York. Altman maintained that he himself was duped by the bank. He was acquitted of all charges, though he did agree to be banned from banking to settle a civil suit by the Federal Reserve.After leaving the practice of law, Altman became chairman and CEO of ZeniMax Media.

As Notch has already mentioned this might just have been an automated response by Zenimax Media's legal department after seeing the trademark application. Hoping that they will 'see the light' and stop this bullying nonsense.

It's not like many people ever call the Elder Scrolls games by their full name. Most of us know them as Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim - and those are the names they will be remembered by.

Bad news this is.

From Notch's blog:

Bethesda are suing us, here’s the full story!

A lot of people want more details about what is going on, so here is everything I know:

First of all, I love Bethesda. I assume this nonsense is partly just their lawyers being lawyers, and a result of trademark law being the way it is.

About half a year ago, our lawyers recommended us to register “Minecraft” as a trademark, so we did. I had voted against it initially, but we did it anyway. Better safe than sorry, and all that. At the same time, we also applied for “Scrolls”, the new game we’re working on. We knew of no similarly named games, and we had even googled it to make sure. I’m not even sure if you CAN trademark individual words, like “Scrolls”, but we sent in the application anyway.

(Disclosure: We’ve enforced the trademark for Minecraft once, when there was a minecraft clone on iOS, using our name. People were emailing me saying our iOS version was buggy and bad, so we asked them to change the name of their game, and they did.)

A while later, out of the blue, we got contacted by Bethesda’s lawyers. They wanted to know more about the “Scrolls” trademark we were applying for, and claimed it conflicted with their existing trademark “The Elder Scrolls”. I agree that the word “Scrolls” is part of that trademark, but as a gamer, I have never ever considered that series of (very good) role playing games to be about scrolls in any way, nor was that ever the focal point of neither their marketing nor the public image.

The implication that you could own the right to all individual words within a trademark is also a bit scary. We looked things up and realized they didn’t have much of a case, but we still took it seriously. Nothing about Scrolls is meant to in any way derive from or allude to their games. We suggested a compromise where we’d agree to never put any words in front of “Scrolls”, and instead call sequels and other things something along the lines of “Scrolls - The Banana Expansion”. I’m not sure if they ever got back to us with a reply to this.

Today, I got a 15 page letter from some Swedish lawyer firm, saying they demand us to stop using the name Scrolls, that they will sue us (and have already paid the fee to the Swedish court), and that they demand a pile of money up front before the legal process has even started.

I assume this is all some more or less automated response to us applying for the trademark. I sincerely hope Bethesda isn’t pulling a Tim Langdell.

I will get this. I hope they'll make Borderworlds. I want multiple worlds to explore!

From the image I can see we might get some city areas (or a long road area), grassy plains and snowy mountains. There are new robots, possibly the new Claptraps. There are new vehicles, some of which we might get to use - a flying vehicle and walker vehicle.

Then there is a creature on top of what might be a mining drill (reminded me of the Thumper from Firefall) - the creature might be a hint of a new mysterious enemy. These drills seem to be all over the snowy area. The large structure in the sky might be some kind of an Overseer structure (AI?). I can only hope that this is a space station players will play within, possibly taking players to another planet.

Oh, and Borderlands 2 also seems to feature weather changes, or at least diffirent weather in diffirent locations.

It's not 51 games though. It's 51 items, that include 8 games (and, as far as I have heard, toy guns).

Waiting for the announcement that the PC version of From Dust requires 'always on' internet connection.

Might explain why they delayed it on the PC.

@Bones8677 said:

@Spekingur said:

Whoever owns the domain closed the redirect and set up the site as previously except with more BF3 references. The domain is registered through Domains by Proxy, so the actual owner is not known. Activision filed a 11 page complaint explaining why the ownership should be transferred to them and against Domains by Proxy.

Sorry, but in my opinion Activision should not get these domains since they obviously didn't think far enough ahead. A very large error on their part which they should pay for. Preferably with large sums of money.

You do realize you're pretty much defending Domain Squatting? Activison has every right to claim the domain for themselves.

Do they? Why is that? Do they actually own the brand name? I thought it was all still up in limbo seeing as the trial (Zampella and West vs. Activision) is ongoing.

And no, I am not defending Domain Squatting - it is though a real thing and has been happening for quite a while. It should have come as no surprise to Activision that someone had registered that domain and it is very strange that Activision is just now realising that they might have to register a few domains for their upcoming game. One would have thought that with Modern Warfare 2 they would have prepared for this sooner. They are a big company with lots of lawyers (explains the 11 page complaint) and apparently no brain that thinks far enough ahead.

Whoever owns the domain closed the redirect and set up the site as previously except with more BF3 references. The domain is registered through Domains by Proxy, so the actual owner is not known. Activision filed a 11 page complaint explaining why the ownership should be transferred to them and against Domains by Proxy.

Sorry, but in my opinion Activision should not get these domains since they obviously didn't think far enough ahead. A very large error on their part which they should pay for. Preferably with large sums of money.