EA Own The Word 'Battlefield'. Seriously.

[FullAuto]

I bet you've heard of Edge and Tim Langdell. I'll recap for the sake of hilarity anyway.

 

A developer called Mobigame created a game called Edge in 2009. Langdell, on a one-man crusade to re-define words like 'dick', 'troll', and 'arsehole' had the game removed from the App Store by threatening to sue, because Langdell's company is called Edge Games, and apparently they owned a multiplicity of trademarks including the word 'edge' if not just the entire word itself. Langdell went off the deep end quite quickly, losing the plot and suing EA in 2010 over things like Mirror's Edge, one of their games.

 

Total and utter space cadetish behaviour, well beyond Point Prudence and out into the Sea of Bastardidity. I don't wish death on any human being, but if someone had taken it upon themselves to kill him, slowly, I could have sympathised.

 

He lost, like a retard, and ceded his 'trademarks'. EA's part in this earned them some goodwill on the internet, they were seen as a monolithic big brother, who had no financial interest in the Mobigame/Langdell issue, they were doing the best thing for the industry.

 

Just in case all this is too far back in the mists of time, we've seen this sort of thing happen before, and more recently, with the Bethesda/Notch conflict over Mojang's game, Scrolls, which of course is bound to be confused with their up and coming game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Which of course everyone is referring to as 'Scrolls'.

 

...Oh, wait. No, they're not.

 

But you can see Bethesda's point, right, I mean, both games are out at the same time, aren't they. They're the same genre, too. Their box art is very similar, as well. They'll be sold in the exact same retail channels, so Bethesda are bound to lose sales, aren't they.

 

Oh wait.

 

This brings us to the latest occurrence of this utterly childish, stupid, pathetic behaviour. BBC Battlefield Academy was released by Slitherine in August 2010. It's a turn-based tactical game about WWII, in case you missed my review.

 

Thanks to allegations of copyright infringement from EA (the good guys, remember!), Slitherine have since changed the name to BBC Battle Academy.

 

If you're struggling to understand how it's copyright infringement, please join me in the Cone of Bemusement. The last pure Battlefield title was Battlefield 2 in 2005. So are Slitherine possibly the slowest bandwagon-jumpers-on the world has ever seen? More to the point, how inept are they, then, that their game with 'Battlefield' in the title does not resemble any of EA's Battlefield games in any way, shape or form?

 

It's almost like Slitherine's game is totally unrelated to their games! How weird is that!

 

Enough sarcasm.

 

EA are in the midst of a big marketing push, advertising Battlefield 3 in an attempt to compete with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. EA have decided that the word 'Battlefield' is theirs, it belongs to them, it can't even be allowed to exist in the title of a game that was released more than a year ago. This is the sort of sociopathic bullying behaviour we should not put up with, from the schoolyard onwards. It is sick, it is unhealthy, and the fact that it is a public company behind it does not mean this action does not have a moral dimension. "It's just business." does not suffice. Someone has something you want? You take it from them by force, or by threat of force.

 

But EA is not a convenient Evil Empire upon which to heap all the troubles of the game industry, although it's very tempting and yes, they do make it easy sometimes. The really sickening thing is that we've bought, continue to buy, and no doubt will carry on buying EA's games, enabling them to bully whoever they like into compliance.

 

We are to blame. We have the industry we deserve.

[Space Voyager]

We are to blame.

We? Wouldn't that be courts?

[Pete]

It took me some time to compose the news post about this shitty news and the rather more positive news from Slitherine that comes with it.

 

I was going to keep it opinion-free and as detached as possible, and I think I managed to a degree. I chose instead to only be directly insulting on one occasion (which is justified in that everyone reading it will agree) and the rest of the time I was merely a tad humorous.

 

Anyway, I agree with FA's post above. This is frankly ridiculous and a bit sickening. Not long now until they try and bully people over the word "the" in game titles.

 

I only hope the likes of Blizzard have a better grip on reality than some of the other big players and don't try and stop Kerberos from using the word "Star" as Sword of the Stars is really similar to StarCraft (Pretty sure they wouldn't - it's just the only amusing example I can think of right now).

[silencer_pl]

In US you can trademark your ass I think.

 

The battle over trademarks and rights is so boring that talking about it is so silly that I don't want to think about it.

In world were money rules them all you just see stupidity every corner.

[FullAuto]

I despise EA, to me they represent something that goes beyond it being a business, I know the games industry is a business, I know people need to make money, but EA are something else. They've turned themselves into something akin to a steamroller, except they squash devs, not road surfaces. How many studios have they shut down, amalgamated, cut up, etc, and apparently to do that to every one of them made good business sense? To have yearly iterations of a stable of titles, regardless of anything changing apart from the minutiae?

 

I remember in 2008 when they released Dead Space, Mirror's Edge, and one other new IP (can't remember what it was, anyone?) and I saw a gentle tide of goodwill swell up. EA aren't that bad after all, look at them trying new things, they don't just regurgitate their shit year after year...

 

They built on this by taking on Langdell, there was a nice side-effect of people cheering from the sidelines for EA, and meanwhile they were doing things like Project Ten Dollar, the Online Pass, holding back content from games to be DLC, etc (not that this passed without criticism, it didn't). I'm not saying EA invented all this nastiness, I'm saying if they do it, in a business that is "all about the bottom line" then other companies think they must follow suit to stay competitive.

 

EA aren't the cause, I'm not altogether sure what the cause is, but they're a massive problematic symptom, and they also seem to be infectious. And they've got to be so massive and problematic because we buy their games. Including me, BTW, I'm just as guilty as your average gamer, if not more so because I've been involved with games for decades now, I can't claim to be ignorant of their history.

 

I look at what they do and I really do despair and then I jog out and buy Dead Space 2. Yes, okay, I'm supporting the developer, though, not just EA. Except Visceral Games used to be EA Redwood Shores, and they are still owned by EA.

 

Their business practices go far beyond those needed to stay in business. I would characterise them as spiteful at best. Even disregarding everything they have done in the past, let's just stick with this one current issue.

 

Was there ever any chance of anyone buying BBC Battlefield Academy thinking it was an EA Battlefield game? Was EA ever going to lose a single sale? Ever gone looking for a FPS set in 2014 and ended up buying a turn-based tactical game set in WWII by mistake?

 

It's not just EA, it's Activision and Ubisoft and so on. And i'm not going to say "It doesn't have to be this way." because it does, because, well, look, it is this way.

 

But no more EA games for me.

[Sunflash]

The fury of a thousand suns...

[Space Voyager]

I can not make myself blame EA or Bethesda. Industry or whatever business will always try to push its limits. THE COURTS are the ones that let this crap happen. Even if a law suit would have been lost for EA in the end - it is too costly for the sued and in the end they usually don't loose the law suit. They go bankrupt far sooner.

 

If the courts worked a bit faster and used common sense, none of this would be happening.

 

Idiocy we see is the result of possibilities the industry has.

[Thorondor]

Despicable.

[Pete]

Wow Thor, I think that's the first time I've seen you sum a situation up in just one word - that to me shows just how disgusted you are by this (and rightly so).

[FireWarrior]

Hmmm, to me using the Scrolls debacle as an example is not entirely right. Bethesda have yet to make any real silly/stupid statements on that case and due to the idiotic way copyright laws work, if they do not defend their title at all, then the courts won't support them on a true infringement if/when it does occur.

 

It's silly, but blaming the industry or Bethesda is not entirely right. I would not be at all surprised to learn that Bethesda is not entirely happy with suing Mojang.

 

With regards to EA. EA is what EA has become, for the last decade(s) some of their most stable sources of income have been the yearly regurgitation of sports games. When people actually buy that sort of crap, do you really expect EA to bother switching their approach?

 

As usual, in the end though we will stick with it because they send out just enough good games for us to continue supporting them, rather than doing the sensible thing and just ignoring everything involving EA. I pre-ordered TOR because I'm a sucker for Star Wars for example

 

Trademark and copyright laws were never meant to cope with the level of idiocy we see these days. The sheer number of patents and individual design ideas people attempt to protect have gotten entirely out of hand, and it opens up cases where any decent judge would normally fall off their chair laughing, instead having to seriously consider the implications of twelve dozen other cases. Dumb shit is bound to happen when you get to that level.

[Pete]

But someone at Bethesda has initiated a similar lawsuit so how is this all that different aside from the fact that this one has been settled?

 

There are arguments that I've seen elsewhere that maybe management don't know what the legal department are doing, but frankly the legal department still have to to run decisions by management so someone at the top at Bethesda knew about the Scrolls thing before it kicked off.

 

At the very least the entire management team know about it now but they've still yet to resolve the issue by dropping it entirely.

 

Okay, so generally blaming the industry as a whole might be generalising a bit, however I bet someone here can name qt least 5 large publishers/devs that have smacked down the little guys over the names of games. It seems that as some companies get bigger, they lose sight of where they started out and it all comes down to protecting IP to the extreme (the Battlefield Academy issue is extreme in my book - who was ever going to get confused?).

 

Personally I'm not putting EA and Bethesda in the same category here - as far as I'm concerned Bethesda have got far more right in the past than they have wrong, but these two naming issues are similar and both companies are/were silly to pursue them.

 

I just wish Slitherine/Matrix Games hadn't given in and had gone the same route as Mojang did to make it public and shame the opposition.

[Bomb Bloke]

I just wish Slitherine/Matrix Games hadn't given in and had gone the same route as Mojang did to make it public and shame the opposition.

The difference is that if Slitherine went public with "we won't give in" stuff, I don't think anyone would care - Mojang is small, but very, very popular.

[Thorondor]

@Pete:

 

I'm hoping they'll sue over the word 'despicable' so that I might concede and let them keep it for themselves.

 

They're not worth the waste of breath or time.

 

Talk won't do much good, but one thing still does - boycott. Blacklisted!

 

::

 

Support BBC BA and the people behind it with your purchases!

[FullAuto]

Rock, Paper, Shotgun jump on our outrage bandwagon.

[Pete]

Kind of. But Market Garden is surely the second add-on and no the first as RPS say.

 

I know, I'm being picky and other than that it's good exposure to the whole situation.

[FullAuto]

But someone at Bethesda has initiated a similar lawsuit so how is this all that different aside from the fact that this one has been settled?

 

Agreed. It's identical, and the thing is, it's not a trademark issue. It's not about courts, laws, stupid judges, retarded juries, expensive and lengthy trials.

 

Let me be 100% clear: I do not believe any of this has anything to do with actual concerns about trademarks.

 

Do we seriously believe for one second that Tim Langdell had a point with any of his actions? I know what the objective was, and that was to make money. Despicable, but I can understand it. Edge Games, Langdell's company, last released a game in 1994 before all this started. So he didn't have any economic concern when Mobigame released Edge, he wasn't losing money.

 

It's the same with EA this time. Does anyone here believe that they would go looking for Battlefield 3, and end up somehow purchasing Battlefield Academy? A game released a year ago. So, by EA's account, Slitherine are either jumping on the Battlefield 2 bandwagon (released 2004, IIRC?) years late, or are anticipating the release of Battlefield 3 (which was hardly mentioned a year ago, so Slitherine missed the bandwagon, which is passing by, er, now).

 

And yes, it's the same with Bethesda. Skyrim (that's what everyone is actually calling it, I have yet to see anyone call it The Elder Scrolls V) comes out this year, RPG in a well known series (anyone call Oblivion 'Elder Scrolls IV'?). Scrolls from Mojang...when's it out? How many people trying to buy Skyrim will end up going to Mojang's Scrolls site? Fair enough, it looks like they share a fantasy aesthetic, but Scrolls is described as:

 

The game we envisioned had elements from the collectible card game genre as well as from traditional board games. It would be a strategic game with a strong foundation in tactical game play but with a touch of random and chance guaranteeing a never-ending stream of curve balls.

 

Nothing at all like Skyrim, in any way. Not to mention, Skyrim is for sale right now yet Scrolls is not. Pretty weird behaviour from a company trying to batten onto Bethesda's series.

 

It's not about trademarks. The titles have exactly one word in common, one of which is an extremely common word in strategy gaming, the other is not exactly rare in fantasy-themed games.

 

if they do not defend their title at all, then the courts won't support them on a true infringement if/when it does occur.

 

The thing is, though, no infringment has occurred. No doubt you can make it sound like one in court, and no doubt some idiots would believe it is, but it isn't. If Mojang's game was called 'Elder Scrolls' yes, totally clear case of infringement. 'Older Scrolls' for instance, is similar enough to be worth suing for. But 'Scrolls'? By this rationale, EA should be applying to have Battlefield Earth withdrawn from sale (it should be withdrawn anyway because it's horribly shit, but never mind that now), and the term 'scrolling' should belong to Bethesda (it just means playing one of their Elder Scolls games, you see, it doesn't mean anything else and never has). Do Bethesda really need a trumped-up accusation to support them in case of hypothetical future true infringements?

 

It's bullying. EA and Bethesda can afford to bully smaller companies. They can tie releases up in knots, ruining the smaller company's income, bankrupting them. They can sue, taking years, and even if they lose, they can shrug off the loss and carry on. Slitherine and Mojang cannot absorb the same kind of financial damage and stay in business.

[Space Voyager]

It's bullying. EA and Bethesda can afford to bully smaller companies. They can tie releases up in knots, ruining the smaller company's income, bankrupting them. They can sue, taking years, and even if they lose, they can shrug off the loss and carry on. Slitherine and Mojang cannot absorb the same kind of financial damage and stay in business.

I agree. Very much. It is just the same as with non-bioengineered seed keepers and their huge multinational adversaries who want everybody to be dependent from their products.

 

It is because they can.

[FullAuto]

Story on Game Industry.

 

You need an account to read it, but here's the juicy highlights.

 

"It was a big success for us, it was an approachable war game that found an audience outside of our niche gaming fans," Marco Minoli, marketing director at Slitherine, told GamesIndustry.biz. "We were just about to announce the first add-on when we received a letter from EA's lawyers and at first we laughed."

 

A month after release in August 2010, Electronic Arts claimed the game was infringing copyright, instantly putting a planned expansion, PSP, Mac, iPad, Xbox 360 and DS versions of the game on hold.

 

"We were caught in the middle because it was a BBC brand. They've been really helpful but the BBC wasn't prepared to start at fight with EA for a minor wargame," he added. "But we couldn't change the name because it was a licence we acquired."

 

While the issue was debated between company lawyers, production on the series stopped, costing the strategy publisher dearly until a settlement was reached in July this year.

 

He added: "I guess what we learned was copyright infringement is based on how deep your pockets are, not who's right and wrong."

 

Marco adds in the comments section:

 

My understanding is that EA threatened immediate injunctive action within 7 days unless we changed the name of the game, which was clearly impossible as the game was already released to the market and was a licensed brand from the BBC.

In the event 6 months of protracted negotiations still saw no action from EA. However they continued to threaten further legal action and our legal bill was mounting up fast.

In the end we took the pragmatic decision to negotiate a name change which allowed us to continue to sell the already released products. Regarding your comment on trade marking, irrespective of the rights and wrongs of a trade mark dispute, the general rule is that the guy with the deepest pocket wins.

When we weighed the costs of rebranding the game against the costs of a legal fight with EA we had to be realistic.

[Pete]

I would have bunged them some money - wouldn't be hard to do legally as I could just have bought ten copies of BA.

 

Oh well. Nice to see that they didn't just give in immediately, though I didn't think they would have done.

[FullAuto]

And according to Notch's Twitter, the Scrolls case is going to court.

[Space Voyager]

Ah what bollocks...

[Pete]

I look forward to him winning. Knew it couldn't just be a case of lawyers being lawyers.

[FullAuto]

[FullAuto]

Notch offered to change the name?

[The Veteran]

I don't think it's necessarily the larger 'aggressive' companies that need keeping in check but as suggested the courts who make the call. On top of that though it's mostly down to the defendants as surely no court will rule in favour of a prosecutor without a case will they? Although I don't know, maybe in America...

 

Point is though, Slitherine could have probably told EA to go screw themselves as the products and names are NOT the same. If the court worked the way its intended to then it would support the defendants case because it is based on FACT. Just like EA beat Langdell by saying 'he's being stupid sir', surely Slitherine could have employed the same ipso facto common sense defence...