Zenimax goes after “Fortress Fallout” creator over game title
Zenimax Media, the publisher who owns Bethesda Softworks, has a habit of going after other games whose names bear even the slightest resemblance to one of their titles, and now they are throwing their legal weight at one small dev to force a name change.
Fortress Fallout is an upcoming free-to-play mobile game that allows players to design their own fortresses and then battle one another to see whose is the strongest.
Fallout, on the other hand, is a post-apocalyptic RPG series set in an alternate history of the United States where the wholesome, nuclear family culture of the 1950s never went away.
Would anyone ever confuse the two? Well, Zenimax, who owns the Fallout franchise, certainly thinks so, and their legal team has ordered the developer of Fortress Fallout to change the title of the game or face legal action.
“Our lawyers said ‘Yeah, Bethesda is a notoriously litigious company,'” said Jordan Maron, the creator of Fallout Fortress. “Obviously they have lots of money and resources at their disposal, which–well, I and my partner don’t really have at the moment, so essentially we’re being strong-armed into having to change our name.”
Maron added, “I don’t believe that people would see Fortress Fallout on the app store and say ‘hey, it must be a sequel to the Fallout series.'”
“A bit of a repeat”
Maron noted that Bethesda’s complaint against his game was “a bit of a repeat of the Mojang Scrolls thing,” referring to a similar claim the company made against Minecraft creator Mojang. Mojang had been working on a new game called Scrolls, which Bethesda claimed infringed on the name of their Elder Scrolls series.
But, as Maron mentions in his video, Mojang had enough resources and clout to fight back, and eventually the two companies reached a settlement that allowed Mojang to keep the name Scrolls provided it did not attempt to trademark it or compete with the Elder Scrolls games.
While Fortress Fallout will be changing its name, the small mobile game has gained the kind of publicity most indie developers dream of.
Image credit: @FortressFallout/Twitter
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