The War Z Loses Trademark for Being Too Similar to World War Z

[Shawn Zipay]

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has revoked the trademark for The War Z after Paramount contested the name, claiming it was too similar to World War Z. World War Z being an upcoming film from Paramount that is loosely based off of the book of the same name.

The reveal of this trademark dispute came to light from a Tumblr account called "War Z Scam" and despite the obvious bias in that site, they do note the actual USPTO documents for this trademark dispute.

This means that The War Z will more than likely have to change its name due to its similarity to World War Z. It also brings to light that the trademark was filed only in July 2012, which may indicate that development on The War Z has only been underway for about half of a year, and not for multiple years as the developers claim.

Paramount also has a hand in developing their own game based off of World War Z which may also play a role in The War Z having to change its name. These documents were last updated with a suspension letter back in mid-November 2012, but the team behind the game has obviously not changed the name prior to its first release.

[jimykx]

boom motherf*****

[CptainCrunch]

I haven't seen a game with so much.....what's the word.....against it.

Maybe controversy?

[K-16]

Scandal? Issues? Angry riotting? Educational material for those who dropped out of elementary school? Surely one of them is what you're looking for CptainCrunch.

No seriously, the community is having a great time discussing how 10km² = 100 sq km, and it's still hotly in debate! The moderator managed to make two mistakes with his post and only managed to fix one of the two when he editted later (there is a redundant word in there he didn't delete).

If you look carefully in the thread I will link to you, even English and Science is thrown into the mix!

First, I will immunize you with this, and then I will show this and this. As a bonus, Mr. Titov replied to both threads before locking them as usual. Be sure to reserve a bit of time before diving into these trenches, and immunize yourself with the link I have provided.

Hmm? Oh I'm derailing this newspost? My apologies, my time spent in those forums turned me into somebody very childish. I'll clean this up. Mr. Titov replied by saying we are misinterpreting the trademark registration and tells us how to read it properly. Problem is, the application's going through a probationary period so Mr. Titov may need a lawyer to teach him what is actually going on. Both Zip's linked WarZscam tumblr and the forum community point out Mr. Titov's mistakes and are awaiting an official announcement on what is going to happen to the name (though it's safe to say we'll see a cameo of Captain Obvious if it happens).

Again, my apologies, I smashed my face against my desk too much while being addicted to interpretive math and felt compelled to share it. I was in those trenches for a long while of non-stop laughter and smashing. When I realized I looked and felt like The Joker, I closed the window. I'll try to stop derailing newspost topics for next time.

[Stev0esque]

Yeah, I don't much care for the game and never played it(and Love the concept of Day Z more) but I personally believe all the hate is unprecedented. If it sucks, ignore it and move on. Reddit is full of "OH KEKEKE WARZ SUCKS LOL!" or alternatively "BAAAH! FUCK YOU WARZDEVS WARZ SUX NEVER GONNA PLAY IT!"

[CptainCrunch]

I think K-16s post shows the hate (or whatever word you want to add) very valid. There is so much "trickery" going on for this title and it seems to me the gaming community is calling them out. From the things I have seen, Ive never seen a company stay on such a straight line and edit/delete/censor so much information.

It reminds me of the match making scandal of IW/CoD.

This is just my opinion, but it seems the (insert your word) is very warranted and is being stretched out by the devs of the game.

[K-16]

Honestly, I'm beginning to wonder if this is all due to a complete misunderstanding due to language barriers, and a general lack of a business sense. I mean they did their own PR, and therefore didn't know future features should be listed as such, map sizes are implied to be playable areas scaled to real-life, anti-cheat measures are never perfect (but active communities can keep things under control with admin access), footnotes and disclosures should be provided to any features that aren't finalized (player counts), and micro-transactions are implied to be for the F2P model.

For example, in Hammerpoint's mind, they can set the scale to anything and will include inaccessible mountains (their rangefinder isn't to scale unfortunately). Player slots are appropriately set to 50, because 75 (let alone 100) was not fun to play according to player surveys (but technically private server admins can set the player slots to 100 if they want to). Anti-cheats worked at the time of testing, so it was considered "near-perfect" which unintentionally challenged the cheaters (admittedly the fake items is rather clever if it actually worked; would've been as cool as Serious Sam 3: BFE's/Batman: Arkham Asylum's anti-piracy measure). Microtransactions aren't illegal to implement in any model, so why not make money from people who are lazy to work towards catching up to their veteran player friends who spent more time in-game? I mean, people pay for gold farmers so why not this? And Activision-Blizzard already did microtransactions for both Diablo and WoW which have retail prices on them just like The War Z.

The real problem is, I suspect due to their language barrier and lack of business sense, by which I mean differing gamer perspectives on ethics between Hammerpoint and their customers; I specifically mean gamer as nothing illegal has happened minus the false advertising (which is due to their misunderstanding, more on that later), TOS copied from LoL (which can be easily handled without a lawsuit), and trademark conflict (ditto). Everything else is unethical from our perspective, but not actually illegal (VALVe pulled away the sale because Steam as a reputable sales platform is being questioned). That's where footnotes and disclosures come in. Instead of doing that, they've been more focused (perhaps rightfully so because we do flame and swear like immature children) on closing threads and banning/blacklisting customers. So they've been stifling us, instead of opening their own mouths and explaining everything from their own website, stickied forum threads, and on their Steam page. Not everyone is willing to spend time looking for bits and pieces of information hidden away in locked threads or interviews.

Basically I believe that they're not being scammers, but they are being stupid. I would suggest for them to start with an apology and initiate a Reddit AMA session for at least a week (this needs to be announced beforehand so everyone will show up prepared). Despite several answers floating around the web, we're still misinformed and we've judged Hammerpoint Interactive for smacking us with gags and arrogance. Mr. Titov, this isn't how you show the world that you are different than Stellar Stone LLC and GameMill Publishing; if you are going to push the blame on those two companies for your past, then show us how you are different in this very present! Keeping a year's worth of funding reserved for a different project should The War Z not perform well in the long-term may seem like a clever business strategy, but how are your customers going to trust you with your new project? Legal actions and ethical actions are two different things, but damn it they have a very similar impact on customers! We don't forget unethical (let alone illegal) actions no matter how much time you give it. It doesn't "blow over."

I'm sorry for the wall of text, but I think this is really what is going on in my mind and opinion and felt pretentious enough to share it.

[Linux]

My two cents on this is that I tried to get a refund on the game when I ordered it a while ago because I though maybe something good would have come of this and they have still actively refused to refund my money or my friends. But any who I think this game is honestly going to fall through and not go anywhere; after all this bs that they are putting out to people and the gaming community fighting back so hard against them I don't see this game getting much done because they constantly have to defend against things and well I don't see the game going any where any time soon.

[jimykx]

No seriously, the community is having a great time discussing how 10km² = 100 sq km, and it's still hotly in debate!

Well, after all It's a community that even after reading posts that I and others made on those forums, full of evidence and facts that the game was a cheap use of The War Inc to make some cash, still went on saying the game was not a scam and was going to be way better than dayz. I mean, I don't understand how there were people there who followed up those forums much more regularly than I did and didn't see what was happening right in front of their eyes. It's like they were self-blinded by their own idea/image/creation of the game. They were basically giving it unrealistic and false traits. In my opinion as soon as the first video footage of the game was shown I knew for sure that there was something really wrong with the game. Specially taking the fact that it had been in development for so much time even though it was already using an existing engine, and had a ton of crappy sounds, animations from the last century and a massive lack of features.


One of the funny things is that after the actual release of the game, the game problems ended up being way worse than I thought they would be.