What would a week be if I wasn’t furiously typing away behind my computer about another ridiculous and asinine lawsuit in the gaming industry? One would think that with all the simulation games out there, there would be a “legal letter” simulator because, judging from the industry, that’s as fun as it will get.
In today’s edition of ‘Let’s file a lawsuit because we’re bored’, an indie developer publicly documents their fight with Monster Energy, who filed a trademark dispute over a 2020 PC game title. A game titled Dark Deception: Monsters and Mortals. I’m not even kidding you.
Monster Energy is a Coca-Cola-owned energy drink maker. If they’re known for anything outside of their highly-caffeinated drinks, it’s aggressively targeting video game developers with trademark disputes. Over the past several years, some disputes have included terms like Monster, Unleash the Beast; Reign; Super Fuel; M; Mons; Monstik; Monxter; 1M; Unleash the Bubbles; Monster Cravings, and many, many others.
The only reason gamers haven’t heard of many of these cases is that they’ve rarely gone to trial, with most developers not wanting to stand up against the Energy drink juggernaut. Until now. Dark Deception: Monsters and Mortals developer Glowstick Entertainment has decided not to take the threats from Monster Energy lying down.
Glowstick Entertainment CEO Vincent Livings has gone public with a thread on Twitter where he goes into details about the entire situation to shed light on Monster Energy’s effort to, in Vincent Livings’s own words, bully and bankrupt game studios with lengthy high-dollar litigation.
1. It's well known that @MonsterEnergy is a notorious trademark troll. Unfortunately, they're at it again. For a company that likes to target their drinks at gamers, they also like to try to bully & bankrupt game studios with lengthy high dollar litigation. #indiegamedev #gamedev pic.twitter.com/8xvg7iWqQe
— Vincent Livings (@VincentLivings) March 29, 2023
Vincent Livings is also not just promising to follow through on litigation; he has also asked that gamers make a stand by stopping all support of Coca-Cola and Monster Energy. Vincent Livings hopes that by boycotting the two companies, they will eventually learn that going after game studios is not in their best interest, leading to the hashtag #boycottmonsterenergy.
Even if Vincent Livings fails with his litigation, he hopes his fight encourages others to fight Monster Energy. He said he was disappointed that a big company like Ubisoft allowed themselves to be bullied by Monster Energy to rename their game Gods and Monsters to Immortals Fenyx Rising in 2020.
What do you think of all this drama? Do you think Monster Energy has a leg to stand on, or is Vincent Livings fighting the good fight? Let us know.