We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites - especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis. Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. And that, in turn, feels like it could be the starting point for Take-Two Atari-izing itself. But is anyone really looking at a promotion agency for streamers and eSports teams called Max Pain and thinking that this has anything to do with Take-Two's video game franchise? That seems pretty unlikely.īut wherever you come down on these individual instances, it sure feels like Take-Two is becoming more and more focused on being the IP police rather than doing what made the company the giant it is in the industry: making outstanding AAA games. Sure, streamers stream video games sometimes. In this case, Max Payne and Max Pain sound the same when spoken, except that the services rendered appear to be significantly different. The trademark dispute has been extended, and appears to be ongoing.
#MAX PAYNE 2 NOT LAUNCHING WINDOWS 10 SERIES#
Whilst the US Patent and trademark office doesn’t appear to list what this specific trademark is over from Take-Two, it appears as though the publisher is filing in connection to Max Payne, the series developed by Rockstar. Max Pain was given an incorporation date (the date it can commence business) of June 29 2020. The second might be closer to a valid opposition, though it still all seems rather silly.Ī more recent and open trademark filing from Take-Two concerns Max Pain, a business which according to promotes Twitch streamers, Youtube content creators and Esports teams. This appears to be pure trademark maximalism, or bullying. The studio's name being somewhat similar to the name of the planned game doesn't really point to any serious concern about public confusion mixing up the two. That point being: this is a silly opposition to begin with. There is no detail on offer as to whether Take-Two's threat of opposition was the reason for the abandonment, but that's mostly besides the point. After being published in May of last year, the trademark was abandoned on March 20 this year.Īs the post notes, the application was abandoned by Hazelight Studios in March of this year. This included the publisher attempting to file a trademark dispute over It Takes Two with Hazelight Studios. The owner of Rockstar Games has filed hundreds of trademark disputes to the United States Patent and Trademark Office over words and phrases like “2K”, “Rockstar” and “Take-Two”. The first deals briefly with an opposition for a trademark application by Hazelight Studios for its game It Takes Two. However, it also includes a couple of other examples of trademark bullying I hadn't seen previously. NME has a decent writeup discussing all the IP action Take-Two is getting involved in, some of which includes the examples mentioned above. There is apparently more here than had been previously known. Whether it's fighting its own modding community to release shitty versions of its own older games or filing trademark oppositions for axe-throwing companies (yes, seriously), this just isn't where the focus should be for a company known to make amazing AAA video game titles. I won't pretend that a company like Take-Two is anywhere near there just yet, but it is notable that we have seen a recent uptick in the company engaging in this restrictive and trollish behavior. This process of devolving from competing business to grifting troll is at its most obvious in the end-state, where Atari is now. Atari was once a behemoth in the gaming industry, but have since been reduced to trying to bully and/or sue everyone who comes even remotely close to referencing one of its properties, rather than making any real hay in the industry. There is this thing that sometimes happens to companies that are wildly successful where they stop focusing so much on making the things that made them successful and turn instead to intellectual property trolling.