Bethesda. Yah done goofed.

As everyone knows, big established developers like to shit on the little guys who may some day represent competition in the market. So I can't say I'm entirely surprised by the recent news that Bethesda, or I guess more appropriately, Bethesda's parent company, Zenimax, is attempting to sue Mojang. Mojang, if you don't know, is the company responsible for the indie hit Minecraft. Turns out Mojang is planning another game titled "Scrolls". OH GOD, SOMEONE RING THE FUCKING ALARM BELL. Clearly because the word Scrolls is in the title of a few of Bethesda's games they must own all rights to the word! Just like how Gears of War should have to give up all of its profits, after all, Warcraft came out first! Although, wait, wasn't there a game that used the word "The" prior to the Elder Scrolls games? OOPS. Guess ol' Zenimax didn't think that far ahead.

This seems like an astoundingly stupid move, especially considering the upcoming release of Bethesda's flagship title TSE V: Skyrim. It may simply be that they didn't take bad publicity into mind when they came up with this brilliant scheme. But honestly this wouldn't be smart even if they didn't have any impending releases. Mojang is a beloved company by millions of people. Seriously, Minecraft, has sold over 3 million copies to date, and one of those copies went to yours truly. I'll take a small innovative company over a money guzzling corporate whore of a company any day. Bethesda isn't even staying true to its fanbase with Skyrim, everything about it is stripped and dumbed down to appeal more strongly to the FPS crowd. Much in the same way Bioware has filed the intellectual value of its games down to a nub in recent years. So to effectively screw over your own fan-base, and then make absurd attacks against other more valuable franchises and developers just seems ridiculous. Now I want to make it clear I'm not trying to attack Bethesda here, even though I am disappointed in some of their recent decisions. The people responsible for what has to be the most ridiculous lawsuit since the people who sued McDonald's for making them fat, are the people who own Bethesda, Zenimax. And I can't stress that enough, this is Zenimax's doing, not Bethesda's.

All that said. I wouldn't get too worried about Mojang. I really have never heard of a corporate lawsuit based on such paper thin material. Maybe Zenimax ought to look into hiring a new "crack" legal team. One that realizes you don't actually own the rights to a single word just because it's in your game. And one that doesn't time its unbelievably stupid lawsuit to coincide with the release of their main title. We can only hope this hurts the games sales figures enough that these idiots (the lawyers, not Bethesda) wind up on the streets.

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All else is ©Alex Jenkins 2011