Newsitorial: Rebellion Sues Stardock Over “Rebellion” Name

Gamespot reports that Rebellion Developments, developers of popular games like Alien vs. Predator and Aliens vs. Predator, is suing Stardock, publisher of games like Sins of a Solar Empire and Elemental: War of Magic, due to their use of the name “Rebellion” in Ironclad Games’ Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion. Rebellion claims that the use of the word “Rebellion” in such prominence on the logo infringes on its Trademark and has cost the developer sales.

Rebellion feels it was “deprived of substantial sales of its products” and apparently provided many examples showing how customers might have been misled to believe that they were buying a product of Rebellion Developments instead Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion.

There’s only one real question here: who wouldn’t buy a well received standalone expansion pack to one of the best received strategy games ever instead of another mediocre to crappy game from a developer whose last decent game was five years ago, when The Simpsons Game and that PSP Battlefront game turned out to be alright despite three other bad games that year? And, besides, who buys a game with just a company’s logo on it? Do Rebellion seriously believe that people thought they were buying shares of the company from from an online game store since the game is only available for digital download?

There are only three possible places one can purchase the game and every single one of them makes it very clear that “Rebellion” is the name of the expansion pack. As an example, here is Steam’s page for the game. The most prominent mention of the title is at the very top of the page, where “Rebellion” is in the same sized and type of font as the rest of the name. Only in the small logo to the right is it displayed in any sort of prominence.

The official site for the game makes it clear that this has nothing to do with any developer named Rebellion Developments and flashes the name of the series at your everywhere. The very bottom of the screen clearly shows the two logos of the involves parties behind Sins of the Solar Empire: Rebellion and neither of them are Rebellion Developments.

And, finally, if Rebellion Developments is suing them over the name itself, they’ve got a bunch of other heads to put on the chopping block. Frankly, I think this is just Rebellion’s innovative new way of generating revenue after their games failed to sell well for years.