Bethesda suing Notch

That's doubtful given the fact that the case is clearly frivolous in terms of infringement. It appears to be an attempt to get a better settlement than what Mojang was offering (ie money instead of ensuring no possible confusion with sequels) or to overturn a trademark being issued that shouldn't have been issued (which is much more fair given that Scrolls is a common word).

 

Maybe people will confuse Notch's "Scrolls" for "The Elder Scrolls VI: Scrolls"

 

I am curious.

Lets assume you're an Elder.

Are you allowed to touch the Scroll bar ?

 

Next time I watch Castle in the SKY I am gonna be so confused, I mean is it part of the Skyrim continuity? How can I even know?

 

Imagine the frustration of those individuals who indulge in a bit of rimming, Bethesda will obviously lay claim to that.

 

The idea was that they'd establish a history of actually trying to protect their trademark, frivolous or not. They said that in the article.

 

This wouldn't be (much of) of problem if it didn't appear so petty; seriously, trademarking ''Scrolls''? If it was Skyrim then yes it's understandable, not a common word. And sueing a small indie studio over it? What next, trademark ''fruit'' and sue every single person in the world uttering it? This is completely ridiculous.

But anyway, we know Beth's lawyers are a bunch of idiots already. Here's hoping Notch won't be too affected by any bad publicity (who am I kidding, it's free ads for him).

 

I like Bethesda but their lawyers..... just as bad as their writers and in an ironic twist Todd Howard had a nice chat with 'Notch' about a month ago, it's on the UESP wiki's front page

 

Can't help but feel like Bethesda's lawyers are trying way too hard to avoid getting downsized in this rough economy by launching legal action left and right to show they're actually doing something.

 

http://notch.tumblr.com/post/9038258448/hey-bethesda-lets-settle-this

Heh.

 

Ain't nothin' like some hardcore railgunnin' to show who's the man.
I doubt the Beth lawyers know what Quake 3 is though.

 

lol, what is this? A scene from undergrad? Then does that mean a lawsuit that costs thousands of dollars and a waste of everyone's time is just nothing more than a college freshmens' geek fight? Does that mean little Todd got snubbed in someone during the "chat" about his, I don't know, favorite style of light saber or favorite trek captain or something?

 

It's nice to that Notch both has a sense of humor about this and realises that it isn't personal, and just bethesda doing this shit how it's supposed to be done. Apparently you have to sue over shit like this or stand a chance to lose your trademark/copyright, because American laws concerning that shit are fucking crazy.

And Notch has a clear advantage because Bethesda don't know shit about multiplayer.

 

I was kind of under the impression that Bethesda don't know shit about anything, least of all videogames of any sort.

 

So you think their financial success is solely because of what, luck?

 

Well, to be fair, Morrowind was actually good in some respects. Daggerfall, too, Arena... nah, Arena was garbage.

But luck? Yeah, I'd say a lot of it actually does come down to luck, or at least good timing. Oblivion was one of the first graphically-impressive titles for the Xbox 360 and a great showpiece for the hardware despite its technical shortcomings, especially early on when there weren't many games to compete with. I think being able to switch it on and say "look how big and pretty this world is" was responsible for 90% of its sales. Fact is, a lot of people enjoy derping around a big empty landscape to kill a few hours, and that's okay for them, but for me, that doesn't count for much.

With Fallout 3, Bethesda learned something new: to replace quality gameplay with easily-marketable, front-loaded features. I can tell you that deep, engaging, well-thought-out mechanics didn't sell Fallout 3, it's "I can wear Power Armor and shoot nukes out of a giant catapult". Being realistic, most games and even RPGs tend to sell on that sort of thing as well, but, and this is key - you don't have to compromise the rest of your gameplay to tap into that market. Bethesda's problem is that they basically decide to focus entirely on the "cool shit" and not on actually crafting a good game... if you want anything more from a Bethesda title, you're going to find yourself feeling cheated.

That said, they do at least have a great marketing team, and Bethesda are nothing if not strong in a lot of their art design, which really helps sell their games. But I maintain that, if it wasn't for that lucky timing of Oblivion and the fact that they managed to hook into a new market of casual RPG players, they would still be considered a middle-of-the-road RPG developer with a dedicated fanbase, certainly not the apparent industry leaders they are today. The sad thing about it all? If it wasn't for ZeniMax's marketing and promoting everything Bethesda does as some sort of industry-defining, revolutionary experience, most of the gaming journalism world would probably look at them in the same way they regard something like Two Worlds. When you have the expectation of "this is an awesome high-budget game that will change my life", that tends to colour opinions... unfortunately it seems most popular industry-leading journalists tend to be particularly susceptible to this phenomenon.

Obviously I was exaggerating about them having no talent whatsoever; they have some great artists there, and they have a stranglehold on the "sandbox RPG" genre, mostly because they were one of the first developers to pull it off competently. But do they actually make good games? Well, you might say Burger King makes great fast food... but in the end you're still eating garbage no matter what, even if, as garbage, it is excellent.

 

No, you have to sue over things that actually violate your trademark and/or copyrights. Frivolous lawsuits do nothing to establish a case history of protecting your mark.

 

Zenimax was on Kaiser Report on RT news frequently. Always bashing them. I guess he had a point. But this is beyond everything I imagined. And there we were joking about Beth lawyers all the time. It wasn't a joke after all, they are complete assholes.

If Bioware had "sold their souls to the Devil" (EA), to who the hell was Fallout sold then? Lucifer?
I think praying for Fallout 4 is a viable option now...

 

I'm not so sure that Zenimax's legal department is so evil, they seem to enjoy filing frivolous suits so they may be incompetent but it's all approved by upper management.