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Bethesda Stopped 3 Men Indie Team From Using "Prey" in Their Game Title

X

xch1n

Member
Unfortunately they'll keep making oodles of money. This and the Scrolls incident has made anything by ZeniMax a no-buy. And I was really considering jumping back into ESO for Morrowind.

Shame my righteous indignation won't actually matter, but I guess that's life.
 
T

thepenguin55

Member
Fucking fuck off Bethesda. I've literally never heard a single good thing about how Zenimax/Bethesda does business. They're bullies.
 
Compsiox

Compsiox

Banned
Spring-Loaded said:
I saw the email earlier and thought it was a typo.

If this were the only thing Bethesda Softworks/ZeniMax had ever pulled, I wouldn't bat an eye, even if it's petty.

However, because of this:



they get a nice big "fuck off" from me

I really feel bad for the dev studios they currently own, and I hope no one let's themselves be bought out by them in the future.


Still going to call it Prey for the Gods.
Click to expand...
Does anyone know what happened to Human Head after Shinra Technologies liquidated?
 
E

EvB

Member
To be honest, I don't really understand the title.
If it was Pray for the gods, yes that makes sense.
Prey for the gods just reads weird
 
L

LiQuid!

I proudly and openly admit to wishing death upon the mothers of people I don't like
Between crap like this and withholding review copies of their games for all but paid youtubers, I'm done buying new Bethesda games. This hurts me greatly as I've been playing the Elder Scrolls franchise since Arena in 1994 and one person probably isn't going to make a dent in their bottom line, but I can't support these kinds of business practices. I already don't buy EA/Ubi/Etc games, so I guess tack another Big Publisher onto the boycott.
 
A

Aeana

Member
EvB said:
To be honest, I don't really understand the title.
If it was Pray for the gods, yes that makes sense.
Prey for the gods just reads weird
Click to expand...
If A is hunted by B, then A is prey for B.
I don't know anything about the game, but going by the title, it means that something (you?) is being hunted by, thus prey for, the gods.
 
S

SCULLIBUNDO

Banned
Can people stop focusing on Bethesda's questionable antics and focus on the real head-scratcher of this story - being the question of why in blue perfect fuck these devs think "Praey" is good substitute?

I laughed my ass off reading that. Why not just settle for Pray? Now it's some weird mishmash hilarious word that looks ridiculous and makes no sense.

Praey. I can't.
 
X

xch1n

Member
Remembrance said:
Meanwhile, here's Zenimax trying to muscle in on the Prey trademark for t-shirts as well.

Some random person filed for "Prey" for clothing before Zenimax got around to it. Zenimax wants to put a stop to that even though this person got there first.
Click to expand...

I mean, if they can prove that this person only did it to squat, there's precedence for the squatter losing their rights. For example, if I went out and got halo6.com and halo7.com and Microsoft hadn't gotten to it yet, they would likely be taken from me with no compensation if I tried to extort Microsoft. But if they're trying to strip it despite that person having legitimate business reasons to have it, yeah, that's scummy.
 
Compsiox

Compsiox

Banned
xch1n said:
I mean, if they can prove that this person only did it to squat, there's precedence for the squatter losing their rights. For example, if I went out and got halo6.com and halo7.com and Microsoft hadn't gotten to it yet, they would likely be taken from me with no compensation if I tried to extort Microsoft. But if they're trying to strip it despite that person having legitimate business reasons to have it, yeah, that's scummy.
Click to expand...

halo7.com is a memorial site for someone who died in 2004. I feel like Microsoft will have a hard time getting their hands on that site when Halo 7 is announced.
 
T

TetraGenesis

Member
EvB said:
To be honest, I don't really understand the title.
If it was Pray for the gods, yes that makes sense.
Prey for the gods just reads weird
Click to expand...

It's intentional double meaning. Normally you would pray for the gods but in this case you are prey for the gods.

Not that hard to understand, really. Although changing it to "Præy" just introduces more confusion.
 
Jawmuncher

Jawmuncher

Member
xch1n said:
I mean, if they can prove that this person only did it to squat, there's precedence for the squatter losing their rights. For example, if I went out and got halo6.com and halo7.com and Microsoft hadn't gotten to it yet, they would likely be taken from me with no compensation if I tried to extort Microsoft. But if they're trying to strip it despite that person having legitimate business reasons to have it, yeah, that's scummy.
Click to expand...

could capcom get

dinocrisis.com
dinocrisis.org
dinocrisis.net
 
R

RPGam3r

Member
I'm having a hard time being upset. 1) Bc I love Bethesda output 2) the devs opted for the dumbest looking thing Ive seen in a title in a long time.
 
T

TheRed

Member
Sucks but I'd really like to know why the devs didn't just rename to Pray for the Gods. Like it loses the double meaning but it still works. Praey is just wtf.
 
S

Shahadan

Member
TetraGenesis said:
It's intentional double meaning. Normally you would pray for the gods but in this case you are prey for the gods.

Not that hard to understand, really. Although changing it to "Præy" just introduces more confusion.
Click to expand...

I'm baffled that this needs to be explained wtf
 
G

gstaff

Member
We really didn’t have much of a choice. If we don’t oppose the mark, we risk losing our Prey trademark and that isn’t acceptable. Unfortunately, that’s how trademark law works.
 
M

MUnited83

For you.
gstaff said:
We really didn’t have much of a choice. If we don’t oppose the mark, we risk losing our Prey trademark and that isn’t acceptable. Unfortunately, that’s how trademark law works.
Click to expand...
Then you surely will be losing your trademark very soon because of Wings of Prey then.
And no, you don't risk losing your trademark for letting a goddamn indie title have one word in common with yours.
 
A

AlphaTwo00

Member
I worked on this in 2008? Am I going to be retroactively sued?

250px-Prey_the_Stars_cover.jpg
 
J

Joco

Member
Change "Praey" to Pray or come up with a different title entirely, Praey does not look good at all.
 
R

red720

Member
"Præy for the Gods" would be better than "Praey for the Gods"

Searching for Aenema brings up the tool album, I'm sure google converts the ae to æ.

I've been watching The Last Kingdom a lot, so I'm into æs at the moment.
 
W

Weltall Zero

Member
Alienous said:
Why didn't they call it 'Prey to the Gods' in the first place? Nobody prays 'for' gods, so the pun seems a bit wonky.
Click to expand...

Agreed, the pun works much better with "to". In fact it would have at least three meanings:
1) Offering preys to the gods (as sacrifice).
2) Being preyed on by the gods.
3) The obvious pray to the gods.
I have a suspicion they might not be native English speakers, but then again, neither am I. I'm almost tempted to contact them with this suggestion.

kswiston said:
prey =/= pray
Click to expand...

You don't say, Sherlock... :p
 
E

Eusis

Member
Remembrance said:
Zenimax already went after that game. Years ago.

But they didn't have to change their title in the end!
Click to expand...
This should also tell everyone that this is mainly a bullying tactic that mostly works against smaller targets. If EA wanted to make a game with Prey in it badly enough they could probably get their way within reason (calling it Prey as well or especially Prey II would probably not go well). And on a similar note SE has a similar claim to Saga that Bethesda had on Prey.
 
B

biteren

Member
i wanna like Bethesda for giving us Wolfenstein the new order and Doom 2016 but they keep doing shit like this.
 
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