Durante il 2015 lo studio No Matter Studios aveva annunciato Prey for the Gods, titolo indie ispirato tantissimo a Shadow of the Colossus che vedeva un eroe solitario intraprendere la sua campagna ai margini di un mondo morente per scoprire le cause di quest’inverno perenne.
Dopo aver attirato su di se l’attenzione di tantissimi videogiocatori, il gioco ha raggiunto il suo obiettivo nella campagna Kickstarter ma la salita di Prey for the Gods si è dimostrata essere molto più ripida del previsto. Infatti, in quel di Bethesda, anche in previsione del lancio di domani del suo Prey, ha agito in modo tale che No Matter Studios fosse stata costretta a cambiare il nome al suo titolo per una questione di “omonimia”.
Ora il gioco si chiama Praye for the Gods mentre di seguito potete trovare tutti i dettagli riguardanti questo cambio:
“We could’ve fought this and we did think about it for quite a while. Something like a trademark opposition can be long and depending on how far someone wants to fight it can be very expensive,” the studio explained. “We didn’t want to spend our precious Kickstarter funds, nor did we want to have to ask for additional funds to fight this in court. Using backer money towards something that doesn’t go towards the development or backer rewards felt horrible to us. Even if we did win we’d have to spend a solid chunk of our funds and in our opinion it wasn’t worth it.”
The truth is we initially thought about naming the game Præy for the Gods prior to our initial trailer. The logo has both the woman praying against the duality of prey, and thankfully we get to continue to use that. We figured people would have a hard time trying to type in the æ symbol in search engines etc. This was back in 2015 when we posted a trailer on Facebook and Twitter with had no idea if 100 or even 1000 people would watch the trailer. We were applying for both Prey for the Gods, and Præy for the Gods trademarks shortly after as we realized the extent of what we were making. Unfortunately, Zenimax chose to oppose our mark, as they felt both were too similar to their mark “Prey”. While we disagree with their opposition we were able to come to an agreement.
It was something that kept me up many nights, and no doubt shifted our focus from our game frequently. Worrying about the outcome if we went to trial, if we’d lose our fans or walk away from the mark and still potentially get sued for millions on trademark infringement. This is really something no starting company should have to deal with let alone a tiny team of 3. So the fact that we came out the other end intact still developing the game was a win. One that will no doubt shape our company moving forward.
Praey for the Gods è in fase di sviluppo per PC, PlayStation 4 e Xbox One con il rilascio previsto per la fine di quest’anno. Di seguito, inoltre, un nuovo video di gameplay e il secondo trailer del gioco: