The Polyhedral Knights successfully Kickstarted Renegade City but have now run into a serious legal challenge.
The modern-day ‘anti-hero’ criminal RPG was not a huge success, attracting just over 60 backers and raising less than $4,000, but it was a victory for a novel game.
However, Renegade Game Studios’ legal department or service did not think Renegade City was original enough.
Sprinting Owl Designs first spoke up about a conflict on Twitter. Renegade Game Studios, which publishes RPGs like Power Rangers and Transformers with Hasbro, and Vampire, Hunters and Werewolf with Paradox, are threatening legal action.
Cannibal Halfling Gaming dug into the story with a great report.
Cannibal says the Cease and Desist letter from Renegade to Polyhedral Knights says;
“Unfortunately, your use of the term “Renegade” in the title of your new game creates the likelihood that consumers might be confused between our client’s games and your game, or believe that the two are connected or affiliated. The likelihood of confusion is particularly acute because you are using the “Renegade” element on the identical types of products that are sold by Renegade, and you are both selling to the same types of consumers in the same market channels. As such, Renegade must ask that you agree to rename your game to remove the “Renegade” element. As such, Renegade must ask that you agree to rename your game to remove the “Renegade” element.”
However, Renegade Game Studios has not yet filed any paperwork at Kickstarter to try and get the project scrapped. We’re told the deadline is the 23rd. We’re also told if that response is what the legal eagles want then The Polyhedral Knights have two months to purge the word ‘Renegade’ from their project.
Cannibal Halfling also spoke to Renegade City’s creator Mickey Barfield. One part of that exchange highlights how Barfield can’t really do much about the situation. Mickey told the hungry halflings;
A small company like me that barely covers the cost of production [Renegade City’s goal is $3,000, and has only gotten a few hundred more than that] can’t afford to fight against a large company like this and they know it. So I am left to scramble to find a new name for my game, create a new logo, and change all the things that have this name on there by next Friday. It will all come out of my own pocket cause they feel that I’m a threat to their IP? It’s not right.”
As a disclosure, Geek Native has had — tension — with Renegade in the past, if that’s the best word to use, and the company has accused the blog of clickbait. They disapproved of Geek Native, suggesting Hasbro had approved using Essence 20 to replace and, therefore, rival 5e on GI. Joe, Power Rangers and Transformers and before that didn’t like the use of “Dungeons & Dragon’s 5e” to describe the 5e used by D&D when 5e was first planned for GI Joe, Transformers, et al.
Despite Renegade welching on an interview to discuss this, team Geek Native bears no ill and wants to highlight that legal services that companies of Renegade’s size might hire, or might be required to have as part of their Hasbro license, will shoot first and ask questions later. The Renegade team may sort all this out on Monday and ask their lawyers to stand down.
Geek Native has had a legal challenge before, and from a multi-national with a famous RPG who demanded this Redbubble design was pulled from Geek Native’s store over the use of the word “Gamemaster”.
The giant publisher involved in that claim stated that they owned the word. Geek Native won that tussle without any further legal heat by simply asking the attack lawyers to confirm they really did own the word “Gamemaster”. Renegade may do similar diligence and sort this weekend’s drama out. If they do, I hope they do it quickly as this can be expensive and damaging to The Polyhedral Knights otherwise.
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This was resolved — the publisher will simply be including a statement that their game is in no way associated with Renegade Games LLC., on their web site, and printed in the book.
Update publicly posted here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wastelandsaga1/renegade-city/posts/3839988
Thank you. Later today I’ll put an update notice on the post and, if time allows, write a whole follow up as happy solutions like this should get attention too.