It boils down to likelihood of confusion. I think there would be a legitimate concern here, tbh. But they could have come to an agreement when one registered their mark after the other one had already.
I was talking about being able to get a trademark for anything that is “superX” where X could be literally any word in the dictionary. Its too vague and generic and such an application would almost certainly be rejected.
Supercell, Supergiant, and Supermassive are all trademarkable, and while “super” could cause some confusion, the USPTO doesn’t care so much about that particular point because the wordmarks are all different and the logos are all different.
There is technically nothing stopping a computer software company trademark for “Microstar.” Unless it already exists obviously, but for the sake of argument let’s imagine it doesn’t. Even though the name could cause some confusion with Microsoft, as long as the wordmark and logo design are different they USPTO won’t care.
I mean, mikerowesoft might have a visibly different spelling and logo, but it is audibly pronounced the same. There is a legitimate argument to be made there, no matter how stupid it is. But none of that matters because it was settled out of court. And Microsoft admitted afterward they were too heavy handed in their approach.
I have prosecuted plenty of trademarks. The logos and words are separate trademarks. For the word mark alone, Supergiant and Supermassive absolutely are likely to raise an initial LOC rejection in the same exact class of goods and services. It boils down to whether the similar words are likely to leave a confusingly similar market impression upon consumers. I legit think here it would be hard to argue around with a typical examining attorney–but the trademark office has a ton more lattitude in grants than the patent office, so it isn’t out of the question it could’ve been successfully argued or even granted initially.
Its a british thing. If a company wants to lay off a large amount of employees, they have to go through a process called consultation. This obliges them to sit down with your trade union rep (if you have one) and tell them why your job is being cut.
Not sure how much difference it makes in practice, but at the very least it guarantees a 40 day period between announcing redundancies and actually firing people.
Individuals get fired when they fuck up, companies layoff workers when they fuck up. Large scale layoffs are the outcome of poor planning and organization. You can’t predict markets completely, suppliers charge, etc which accounts for small # layoffs, but large, mass layoffs should be accompanied by replacing executives and leadership roles like board members first to prevent such poor management.
it’s cheaper to hire in bulk and fire “low performers” or whatever than it is to put more effortinto hiring.
and even then, tmk, it’s really only so common in amerikka because worker protections are practically non-existent. if it were more expensive to fire people…then maybe the corpos would plan/hire better
How is a small company realistically going to test if someone is worth hiring or not.
we got into this stupid market because we spent decades neglecting training. When you don’t train for what you need, you don’t get good at identifying what skills you really need in order to succeed.
So this question is already too far gone. If someone has most skills but is missing one: train them for it. Even if the training is as informal as "give them a few weeks in a low stakes environment to work on less valuable (but less risky) work.
Their games are probably not easy to make and definitely not cheap if you hire these famous actors. Sure they are not s-tier level of actors but they are definitely not cheap. I bet many of those actors can ask a higher pay than the games industry’s favorite called Troy Baker.
Also the market for interactive movies probably isn’t mega huge either. Every interactive movie series they released was published by a different publisher. Doubt they were massive hits.
Based on what I’ve seen Directive 80211 didn’t seem to sell as well as their previous games, probably because they dropped the “Dark Pictures” stuff from it (or kept it hidden, as it were)… Hard to believe a single mis-step caused this but I’m not in the industry so take that with a pinch of salt.
Once again, this demonstrates just how volatile and uncertain it is to be having game development as a career path. Especially as venture capital and equity deciding the fates of companies they buy out.
Confused Supermassive with Supergiant for a moment, phew
until this comment, so did i.
Same! Then I remembered Supergiant has under thirty employees and that number made no sense.
Yeah me too and then I realized I have no idea who supermassive are.
LittleBigPlanet and Until Dawn are their big ones
I'm surprised these two never got into a trademark dispute...
I am pretty sure you cannot trademark “super” + some other word. You have to be more specific. Well, at least in the USA.
It boils down to likelihood of confusion. I think there would be a legitimate concern here, tbh. But they could have come to an agreement when one registered their mark after the other one had already.
I was talking about being able to get a trademark for anything that is “superX” where X could be literally any word in the dictionary. Its too vague and generic and such an application would almost certainly be rejected.
Supercell, Supergiant, and Supermassive are all trademarkable, and while “super” could cause some confusion, the USPTO doesn’t care so much about that particular point because the wordmarks are all different and the logos are all different.
There is technically nothing stopping a computer software company trademark for “Microstar.” Unless it already exists obviously, but for the sake of argument let’s imagine it doesn’t. Even though the name could cause some confusion with Microsoft, as long as the wordmark and logo design are different they USPTO won’t care.
There is the case of MikeRoweSoft
I mean, mikerowesoft might have a visibly different spelling and logo, but it is audibly pronounced the same. There is a legitimate argument to be made there, no matter how stupid it is. But none of that matters because it was settled out of court. And Microsoft admitted afterward they were too heavy handed in their approach.
I have prosecuted plenty of trademarks. The logos and words are separate trademarks. For the word mark alone, Supergiant and Supermassive absolutely are likely to raise an initial LOC rejection in the same exact class of goods and services. It boils down to whether the similar words are likely to leave a confusingly similar market impression upon consumers. I legit think here it would be hard to argue around with a typical examining attorney–but the trademark office has a ton more lattitude in grants than the patent office, so it isn’t out of the question it could’ve been successfully argued or even granted initially.
I keep getting them mixed up with Supercell, too
Omg yeah, came here to comment this. I was super sad for those 3 seconds
Their name has now been changed to Stellar Mass Games.
“redundancy consultation process” I hate newspeak
Its a british thing. If a company wants to lay off a large amount of employees, they have to go through a process called consultation. This obliges them to sit down with your trade union rep (if you have one) and tell them why your job is being cut.
Not sure how much difference it makes in practice, but at the very least it guarantees a 40 day period between announcing redundancies and actually firing people.
Honestly consultants are overrated
How big was the ceos bonus last fy?
Their CEO quit end of June without any reason stated. Sounds like he was the first one to get laid off.
Well that’s good.
Most of these layoffs are VC groups pulling funding from gaming companies to shift to AI investments
Yeah because they think that AI will make the games in the future.
Have you seen AI make games they’re terrible. They objectively work but they’re not good games because AI has no creativity.
I doubt they even care, VCs are there for investment returns, they don’t give a shit about anything else
the best I’ve seen are shitty clones of simple games like frogger or flappy bird - anything else is about as interactive as a slideshow or vaporware.
Most of these VCs are funded by old boomers who will fall for any tech hype. LLMs are the most successful grift of all time.
Individuals get fired when they fuck up, companies layoff workers when they fuck up. Large scale layoffs are the outcome of poor planning and organization. You can’t predict markets completely, suppliers charge, etc which accounts for small # layoffs, but large, mass layoffs should be accompanied by replacing executives and leadership roles like board members first to prevent such poor management.
it’s cheaper to hire in bulk and fire “low performers” or whatever than it is to put more effortinto hiring.
and even then, tmk, it’s really only so common in amerikka because worker protections are practically non-existent. if it were more expensive to fire people…then maybe the corpos would plan/hire better
Would that be good though? How is a small company realistically going to test if someone is worth hiring or not.
Oh yeah, have you got 10 years experience in the same role?
we got into this stupid market because we spent decades neglecting training. When you don’t train for what you need, you don’t get good at identifying what skills you really need in order to succeed.
So this question is already too far gone. If someone has most skills but is missing one: train them for it. Even if the training is as informal as "give them a few weeks in a low stakes environment to work on less valuable (but less risky) work.
You can’t train someone who can’t be brothered
well that makes the hiring or trial process much easier, no? I don’t think the problem here is “I can’t tell if my employee gives a fuck”.
And I can tell you that passion is not something lacking in the games industry.
For a second, I thought this was supergiant games, and had a heart attack
Ah man, the layoffs are hitting the developers of hit 2013 game “Walking with Dinosaurs?” What is the world coming to??
Layoffs are hitting the developers of hit titles such as the Dark Pictures Anthology and Until Dawn.
Who?
They’ll soon have to rebrand to “fairly large games”.
Their games are probably not easy to make and definitely not cheap if you hire these famous actors. Sure they are not s-tier level of actors but they are definitely not cheap. I bet many of those actors can ask a higher pay than the games industry’s favorite called Troy Baker.
Also the market for interactive movies probably isn’t mega huge either. Every interactive movie series they released was published by a different publisher. Doubt they were massive hits.
Based on what I’ve seen Directive 80211 didn’t seem to sell as well as their previous games, probably because they dropped the “Dark Pictures” stuff from it (or kept it hidden, as it were)… Hard to believe a single mis-step caused this but I’m not in the industry so take that with a pinch of salt.
They’ve released a bunch of non-Dark Pictures games, The Quarry, Casting of Frank Stone and Little Nightmares 3 recentlyish.
Man, they made this sound as generically as ‘fuck you, shit happens, oh well’ as they come.
They are to blame so it’s no surprise they want to make it sound inevitable and unpredictable
Once again, this demonstrates just how volatile and uncertain it is to be having game development as a career path. Especially as venture capital and equity deciding the fates of companies they buy out.