inXile legal challenge forces indie dev to rebrand game
The Alien Wasteland now called Action Alien following cease and desist letter over "Wasteland" trademark
A lone developer has changed the title of his game following the threat of legal action from Wasteland 2 developer inXile Entertainment.
From the perspective of inXile Entertainment, the issue lies in the name of the developer's game, The Alien Wasteland, which it believes infringes on its "Wasteland" trademark. According to Devdan, who has been working on The Alien Wasteland alone, "both games have almost nothing in common and no case of confusion was ever reported for almost two years since my game was first announced."
In a post on The Alien Wasteland's Steam page, Devdan claimed that he attempted to "calmly" explain to inXile that no infringement had taken place due to the games' fundamental differences: one a frenetic first-person shooter, the other an unforgiving tactical RPG.
"But I finally ended up receiving a cease and desist letter from their lawyer asking to either stop using 'Wasteland' or to prepare facing legal actions against me," he said.
"Since I don't have the time or the strength to deal with legal actions from this developer and its lawyers, or even taking the risk of having my game to be took down [sic] from Steam, I decided to change the title to solve this issue, even though this has been a great loss in time and efforts for a very questionable complain [sic]."
The Alien Wasteland is now called Action Alien. A screenshot of the game is below, for reference.
