Naughty Dog vs. Naughty Cat
And other odds and ends involving Ubisoft, Bungie, and a jam-packed stretch of new game releases.
“The first, dominant element of the two marks, NAUGHTY, is identical,” stated a claim from Sony Interactive Entertainment that was filed in early June to the U.S. Trademark Trial and Appeal Board.
Lawyers for PlayStation were talking about two trademarks:
“Naughty Dog” - trademarked a quarter century ago by a game studio that’s become famous for Crash Bandicoot, Jak & Daxter, Uncharted and The Last of Us. Sony now controls the trademark.
“Naughty Cat” - a trademark application filed in April 2024 by a Hong Kong company for use related to “downloadable computer game programs,” some of which can be seen at inaughtycat.com. The Naughty Cat line-up of games includes puzzle game Bubble Bravo and bingo riff Cash Trip.
People might think Naughty Cat was tied to Naughty Dog, SIE’s lawyers explained. They continued:
“The second elements, DOG and CAT, are highly similar in that both refer to house pets and are likely to mislead consumers into believing, mistakenly, that Naughty Cat is affiliated with SIE and/or Naughty Dog or that its goods are licensed or approved by SIE and/or Naughty Dog.”
Companies regularly defend trademarks by opposing those they believe encroach on theirs. If they can convince the appeal board of likely market confusion, the newer trademark might get blocked.
(Or the newer filer might just bail, as appears to have happened in June, when Pennsylvania-based Stable 12 Brewing Company abandoned its attempt to trademark its Super Mash Brothers beer. Nintendo signaled in May that it planned to oppose the trademark for some reason.)
The Naughty Dog vs Cat news made the rounds in early June. (Sorry, I missed this IGN report, but it was June 5 and I’d just picked up a Switch 2 at a midnight launch in New Jersey, slept a few hours, then flew cross-country for a then-secret meeting that day at Activision HQ in Santa Monica.)
The legal dispute hit my radar a few days ago because of an update in the case. Earlier this month, the trademark board granted Naughty Cat’s request to extend the deadlines for both parties’ next filings in the dispute.
Naughty Cat’s reason for the request: “Parties are engaged in settlement discussions.”
Note to readers: This is a rare Saturday edition of Game File, as I get to a few things before heading out on a week-long vacation. There's one more story I’ve been reporting that might not hold until I’m back; so I am going to try to set it up for one more late-August edition of Game File, and then will return to a regular publishing schedule in September.
My reporting is only possible thanks to support from readers. You can sign up—or encourage your friends and foes to—at this link.
Item 2: Two key updates from Ubisoft
Assassin’s Creed Mirage, the 2023 adventure set in 9th-century Baghdad was subject of an unusual 4AM-ET-on-a-Saturday news announcement that the game will soon receive gameplay improvements and a free “new story chapter” set in 9th century AlUla, an ancient city set in what is now Saudi Arabia.
French outlet Les Echoes reported in January that Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund—which has heavily invested in the game industry—was forging a deal with Ubisoft to expand Mirage.
Saudi government-backed investment in gaming in the past few years has been considerable. In 2022, the Saudi sovereign wealth fund financed a $1.5 billion purchase of esports giants and the establishment of the Savvy Gaming Group which pledged to spend $38 billion in the gaming sector. Since then, the PIF and Savvy took out stakes in Nintendo, EA, Take Two, Embracer and more, purchased Monopoly Go maker Scopely, and established the annual Esports World Cup in Riyadh. They did this amid questions about how much of the kingdom’s efforts amount to “sportswashing” distractions from its human rights record vs. its stated goals to strengthen and diversify its regional oil-based economy.
The Division 2, the third-person urban combat game that’s been regularly updated since its 2019 release, is getting a survival extraction mode called “Survivor. Ubisoft says the mode is “currently in the early stages.”
Why’s this notable? Because Ubisoft’s original 2016 The Division had a survival mode that pioneered the extraction genre. In these games, players cooperate and compete to gather loot and escape with it, or to stop others from doing so. After The Division, the genre exploded thanks to the likes of Escape from Tarkov, but Ubisoft’s Division series didn’t follow up on it until now
(Side note. Tarkov launched as a beta in 2017, blew up in 2020, and popularized the extraction genre to the extent that Bungie’s next (troubled) game is one. Just yesterday, Tarkov got a release date for its official 1.0 release: November 15).
Item 3: In brief…
🤔 Bungie chief Pete Parsons is exiting the Destiny/Marathon-maker after 23 years, following multiple mass lay-offs at the studio and struggles with its existing and upcoming games, Kotaku reports.
Studio veteran Justin Truman is assuming the top spot.
Sony purchased Bungie for $3.7 billion in 2022. A Sony executive said earlier this month that the Bungie is being integrated more tightly into the rest of the company’s gaming division.
👀 Dreamhaven, the start-up game-maker helmed by Blizzard co-founder Mike Morhaime, has struggled to find an audience for its first games this year, Bloomberg reports.
Sunderfolk, a strategy tactics game that uses phones and tables as controllers, has sold just 62,000 copies since its April launch; Wildgate, a multiplayer shooter, has sold 130,000 copies in a month, according to a company email cited by Bloomberg. In it, Morhaime says “we are committed to Dreamhaven surviving through this.”
🌍 Sony has announced the first wave of games in its PlayStation MENA [Middle East North Africa] Hero Project, the latest in its programs that support studios in markets where console game development is not widespread.
The initial batch of MENA games are developed by teams in Tunisia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
Sony also has Hero Projects for China and India.
😮 The surprise September 4 release date announcement for the long-awaited Hollow Knight: Silksong has sent other indie studios scrambling to delay their games, Aftermath reports.
Excitement for the sequel has also caused play counts of the original Hollow Knight to spike to record levels on PC. That first game had 31,000 concurrent players on PC at the time of this writing, according to SteamDB. The 2017 game’s previous peak on PC was 20,000 players in 2022. This new trend was previously spotted by IGN.
Silksong development studio Team Cherry re-confirmed this week that the 2,158 people who backed the original Hollow Knight on Kickstarter back in late 2014 will receive free copies of Silksong.
That 2014 Kickstarter, which raised AU$57,138, is a fascinating time capsule. The supporters’ funding was just enough to trigger development for a Wii U version of the game to complement the planned PC release. But it was not enough for a PlayStation Vita edition, nor a third playable character. The Wii U version was later canceled in favor of Switch. Bloomberg reported this week that Hollow Knight has sold 15 million copies across console and PC.
Item 3: The week(s) ahead
(Here’s two weeks’ worth of upcoming game releases and events, since I won’t be filing one of these next week. There is a lot going on worth you knowing about!)
Tuesday, August 26
Peace on earth: Sony-published Helldivers 2 comes to Xbox (already out on PC, PlayStation), while Microsoft-published Gears of War: Reloaded comes to PlayStation (and Xbox and PC)
Thursday, August 28
Destiny Rising, NetEase’s mobile take on Bungie’s sci-fi shooter, launches on Android and iOS.
Metal Gear Solid 3 remake Metal Gears Solid Delta: Snake Eater (PC, PlayStation, Xbox) is released, as is the expansion to my (and my kids’) favorite game of 2022: Kirby and the Forgotten Land + Star-Crossed World Switch 2 Edition (Switch 2)
Friday, August 29
The GeoGessr World Cup is held in Denmark and streamed on YouTube/Twitch (running through Sunday).
Seattle gaming convention PAX West begins (running through Monday)
Lost Soul Aside (PC, PS5), a third-person action game from Chinese studio Ultizero, published by Sony Interactive Entertainment via its “China Hero Project” initiative, is released. (This game first surfaced as a viral solo-dev project back in 2016.)
Shinobi: Art of Vengeance (PC, console), a Sega-pubished sidescroller revival via Parisian studio Lizard Cube, is released.
Wednesday, September 3
Rewindable tactical role-playing game Demonschool (PC, console) and origami side-scroller Hirogami are released.
Thursday, September 4
Long-awaited 2D action/exploration game Hollow Knight: Silksong (PC, console) is finally released.
Best of luck to the day’s other releases:
the better-than-its-rep Star Wars Outlaws (Switch 2; already out on PC, PlayStation Xbox)
the expansion to one of my favorite 2024 games, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle: The Order of Giants (PC, PlayStation, Xbox)
The third-person action/exploration game Hell Is Us (PC, PlayStation, Xbox) from a team led by former Deus Ex art director Jonathan Jacques-Belletête
Adventure of Samsara (PC, console) an Atari-published riff on the classic game Adventure, but fashioned as—oh, dear—a game in the exact same “Metroidvania” genre as Silksong.
Friday, September 5
Sci-fi horror game Cronos: The New Dawn (PC, PlayStation, Xbox, Switch 2), mech battle game Daemon X Machina: Titanic Scion (PC, PlayStation, Xbox, Switch 2), and Everybody's Golf: Hot Shots (PC, PlayStation, Switch), the first Everybody’s Golf game to be released beyond PlayStation (albeit from a different development studio), are released.
Big basketball game NBA 2K26 (PC, console) is released.