It's a pity King targets Stoic Studio. Their first title (The Banner Saga) is amazing. And I really hope that Stoic Studio will have the resources to finish the trilogy.
The statement by the developers:
"Two years ago, the three of us at Stoic set out to make an epic viking game: The Banner Saga. We did, and people loved it, so we’re making another one. We won’t make a viking saga without the word Saga, and we don’t appreciate anyone telling us we can’t.
King.com claims they’re not attempting to prevent us from using The Banner Saga, and yet their legal opposition to our trademark filing remains.
We’re humbled by the outpouring of support and honored to have others stand with us for the right to their own Saga. We just want to make great games."
The developers' statement is wrong. King is not preventing Stoic from using the name "The Banner Saga." That would be the case if King filed a trademark infringement suit. What they have filed is an opposition to Stoic's application. Thus, what they're doing is trying to keep Stoic from claiming exclusive use of the name "The Banner Saga" in the context of a casual online game.
Essentially King are telling Stoic they can use the name, but cannot own it, because it includes the single word "Saga." It's a little unsavory of King to claim ownership of that single word in such a broad context, and the particulars do not sensibly favour their cause.
According to grandparent, King is not claiming ownership. They are claiming "those guys can't trademark Saga."
Their reasoning is "because we use it in our games and have been," but that's not claiming ownership. If I try to trademark "chicken" and McDonald's objects saying "we have been selling Chicken McNuggets for decades," that is not McDonald's saying "we own the trademark on Chicken."
So King is using the argument that everybody else is using against them? (saying that they cannot copyright "Candy" and "Saga" due to them already being in wildspread use)
"The debate here revolves around Pac-Avoid [...] The game strongly resembles another game called ScamperGhost. The details of the situation are complex, but the bottom line is that we should never have published Pac-Avoid. We have taken the game down from our site, and we apologise for having published it in the first place.
Let me be clear: This unfortunate situation is an exception to the rule. King does not clone games, and we do not want anyone cloning our games.
Before we launch any game, we do a thorough search of other games in the marketplace and review relevant trademark filings to ensure that we are not infringing anyone else’s IP. We have launched hundreds of games. Occasionally, we get things wrong. When we do, we take appropriate action."
I'm pretty sure this is an admission that they cloned the game. We know it, they know it, they haven't outright said "we cloned the game", but this is as good as. Unless I'm misreading it, in which case they should correct that statement.
Given that, it would be interesting to know what legal avenues are open to the original developer now. If another party was willing to provide financial support for a lawsuit, surely it's a slam-dunk?
I think the whole issue of whether or not candy crush can be considered a clone is vastly different; obviously, the core mechanism is pretty much (or exactly) the same as in other games, but that mechanism is very straightforward. And I'm not sure the visuals are so blatantly a rip-off. Moreover, I'm unaware of any evidence from a third-party that has revealed King commissioned them to create a clone.
It's tough. I was at a place where another company ripped off our stuff, including our typos, and our lawyer could really only get them to FOAD after we got the patents issued. And at that point they merely exited the market -- no damages.
I should note that we didn't pour 100% of available resources into suing those assholes as a business decision, because we were busy developing our own software.
> It's tough. I was at a place where another company ripped off our stuff, including our typos
We had a customer who complained, off-hand, that a Chinese company had ripped off their (carrier-grade) router design down to the English silk screening on the PCB's.
> The makers even tried to copy the stampings and markings from their original source Martini. Backwards letters and misspellings of the markings are common. The majority of Khyber Pass Martinis I've seen have typos that are very similar. One of the most common is to have the "N" in "Enfield" backwards...likely because one "Master Copy" of an original Martini was made, then passed around for others to makes copies from. The erroneous marking was then faithfully copied from one weapon to the next.
Wow. I had heard that many Chinese factories will use retired molds for casting processes and the like to create copies of things like golf clubs, but this brings the whole process to an entirely new level.
The retired mold bit happens quite a lot with carbon fiber bicycle frames. A couple companies have gotten quite upset with Chinese manufacturers in the past.
One problem is that you can't really copyright game mechanics, at least in the United States. Games are still protected by IP laws in many ways but it's pretty easy to write a direct clone from scratch without infringing anything.
> One problem is that you can't really copyright game mechanics
You can actually patent them[1]:
A patent was granted to Wizards of the Coast in 1997 for "a novel method
of game play and game components that in one embodiment are in the
form of trading cards" that includes claims covering games whose rules
include many of Magic's elements in combination, including concepts such
as changing orientation of a game component to indicate use (referred to
in the Magic and Vampire: The Eternal Struggle rules as "tapping") and
constructing a deck by selecting cards from a larger pool.[9] The patent
has aroused criticism from some observers, who believe some of its
claims to be invalid.[10] In 2003, the patent was an element of a larger
legal dispute between Wizards of the Coast and Nintendo, regarding trade
secrets related to Nintendo's Pokémon Trading Card Game. The legal
action was settled out of court, and its terms were not disclosed.[11]
There was a period of time when the tap mechanic was used by nearly every collectible card game but they all had their own name for it. The mechanic was the same (rotating the card slightly to show it had been used that turn) which I would have thought was what a patent protected against, rather than protecting the name which would have been copyright.
Interesting that this is the same King I remember as King.com. Back in 2009 I was hanging out on the FlashGameLicense irc channel and watching the other dev's business deals.
I'm not sure if I ever met porter but I do remember spending a silly quantity of time talking with the other regulars.
Now one thing I do remember clear was how king.com was BIG. Not AdddictingArcade big but they had polish and felt like a real company. With the smaller flash sites you could tell it was all one person. King.com (Back then it was always .com) had people with job titles and pockets to back the biggest of games.
Now this is only a faint memory but I had the impression King.com was cutthroat. They were driven and were aggressive in games acquisition.
I might be biased, I might have known him, but I belief porter. Not even sure I blame him, there was a ton of cloning in the flash world back then and the flash portal relationships were always mysterious. It would be easy to fall for a kind guy from the portal spinning a story.
Yea I had a similar issue when I used to hang out in that IRC channel as well when I sold flash games.
I work AAA development now, but its weird to see porter and king talking about these things that went down back when this community was full of lovable little underdogs.
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....not likely haha!
edit: okay, I've read the article now and the whole thing sounds pretty shady, yeah. I think what they really need to take away from this is that they should tell the truth when someone calls them out, and not just lie. Because then... you'll get called out twice. Seriously, I can feel a PR carcrash coming on if they just keep telling lies (in broken english).
Tell the truth? What are they going to say, "Yes, we purposefully cloned this game."? Lying about it certainly isn't helping, but I don't think being truthful here would be help them.
Actually, if they owned up, explained how they would do things differently in future, and then followed through on that, I might be prepared to be a customer of theirs again in future.
I am not knowledgeable on all of King's negative practices, but as ridiculous as their trademark pursuit of 'candy' and others sounds, the only question I think they are asking is, "How will it affect our sales?". Otherwise, why go through this fiasco by trying to bully the 'little guys'? In their mind all other developers and their sympathizers combined won't be a match to those facebook users who click and purchase 'Boosters'.
You have to understand, a trademark only applies when you are conducting business where you might be confused with the trademark holder. Apple Computer could exist independent of Apple Records trademark because people don't confuse records with computers. Trademarking Apple doesn't mean you can't have a farming company with apple in the name or logo.
Once Apple started making music players (ipods) they had to work out a deal with Apple Records.
meaning, users will confound Candy Crush with The Banner Saga as much as Apple Computers and Apple Pharmacy, which is none. they're only picking on the little guys because they can.
Candy Crush Saga, Papa Pear Saga, Bubble Witch Saga, Fruit Heroes Saga are all pretty huge games. It's clear that Saga is part of King's brand. Games will come out and try to use that same name style to reap the benefits. Jewel Blitz Saga can come out from some random developer and people will download it thinking it is King's because it's the same branding. Not saying Banner Saga is doing this at all, but if they ignore them, then the trademark is pretty much invalid because any other developer will come in and say "they let those guys go, so they can't go after us either" and then trademark patents are useless. This trademark only applies to online games.
Yes any genre. The game is very different. A reason why is because then every game is going to argue that their game is a different style. You're opening a can of worms.
The statement by the developers:
"Two years ago, the three of us at Stoic set out to make an epic viking game: The Banner Saga. We did, and people loved it, so we’re making another one. We won’t make a viking saga without the word Saga, and we don’t appreciate anyone telling us we can’t.
King.com claims they’re not attempting to prevent us from using The Banner Saga, and yet their legal opposition to our trademark filing remains.
We’re humbled by the outpouring of support and honored to have others stand with us for the right to their own Saga. We just want to make great games."
http://stoicstudio.com/the-banner-saga/