A three person Indie game company recently revealed some sad information about a recent development pertaining to the name of their game. Originally dubbed “Prey For The Gods“, the team at No Matter Studios was forced to change the word Prey to Praey due to trademark laws.
In a newsletter, the company chose to explain to its fans and supporters why they were forced to change the name. Because they aren’t part of and NDA they were able to tell everyone that Bethesda/ Zenimax were the culprits behind it; this isn’t the first time Bethesda has gone after another company over a trademark due to a single word.
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. 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.
With the game being funded by Kickstarter funds, the company felt as though it would be wrong to use the funds for anything other than the production. Thankfully, they later revealed that they had originally had the idea of potentially naming it with an “a” due to the fact that they assumed it would raise an issue. “Unfortunately, Zenimax chose to oppose our mark, as they felt both were too similar to their mark ‘Prey‘ which they purchased from Id Software, in 2009. While we disagree with their opposition we were able to come to an agreement.”
In the final segment of the explanation for the name change, they revealed that they felt lucky, as Zenimax could have still sued them for millions had they felt the purposely infringed on the trademark.
While the game’s name may have changed, nothing about its development or outcome will change, backers will still be getting the game they chose to fund, regardless of whether or not its Prey or Praey.