14 DAY TRIAL // Indie game developer Mojang, best known for creating Minecraft, and game developer and publisher Bethesda, the creator of the recent Fallout and The Elder Scrolls games, have announced that they have settled a lawsuit over the use of the Scrolls name and trademark.
The legal battle between the two companies has ragged for eight months, after Bethesda claimed that Scrolls, the name of the new game from Mojang, has infringing on the protection granted to the Elder Scrolls universe.
Carl Manneh, the managing director of Mojang, stated, “We have settled the lawsuit over Scrolls and Mojang and Bethesda are friends again. To answer the big question - yes Scrolls is still going to be called Scrolls.”
He added, “To answer the second question - we aren’t going to keep the trademark. For us this was never about a trademark, but being able to use 'Scrolls' as the name of our game, which we can - Yey.”
Bethesda was in flimsy ground from the get-go, when it claimed that it was launching the suit in order to make sure that gamers did not mix up The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, which has since launched, with the new Mojang game.
About the only thing that the two titles share is a fantasy theme.
Skyrim is an open-world first-person mix between action and role playing, which delivers an epic story stretching over more than 100 hours of playtime.
Meanwhile Scrolls is a card-based battle title that will use familiar mechanics and a new theme while trying to build on the free-to-play concept.
Scrolls is expected to launch later during the year and, based on the initial success, Mojang has plans to build on the game in the next few years.
Bethesda is widely believed to be preparing some important expansions for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, which might include both Morrowind and Cyrodil.