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Fantasy Flight Publishing, Inc. v. Puffin Software et al.
27 Jul
Posted by Rob Kalajian as Electronic Games, Modern Board Games
You may remember my coverage of an iPad game called Viking Lords a while ago, a game that bore a striking resemblance to BattleLore.
Well Fantasy Flight thinks the game is too similar, and is now taking legal action against Puffin Software and it’s owner, Johannes Paivinen. As of right now Viking Lords is still available in the iTunes App Store, but there’s no saying how long that may last.
You can check out the complaint filed by Fantasy Flight here.
I’ll be interested to see how this pans out. In an ideal scenario I’d love to see Fantasy Flight turn this into something positive and get the beginnings of an official BattleLore app going. What’s probably going to happen is that Viking Lords will disappear off the face of the planet and that’ll be the last we hear of it.
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A few years ago, I spoke with someone once who had designed a crude computer version of Steve Jackson Games’ Illuminati; he said that he had sent it in for them to look at, and was told that they were attempting to develop it in-house, and were not interested at the time.
“What’s probably going to happen is that Viking Lords will disappear off the face of the planet and that’ll be the last we hear of it.”
Correction. What’s probably going to happen is that Viking Lords will disappear off the face of the planet and that’ll be the last we hear of it and then we’ll also never see a BattleLore app because FFG has zero followthrough when it comes to electric versions of their games.
Keep in mind what Christian Petersen said at FFG’s Gen Con In-Flight Report about the economics of board game apps. It’s possible that the company might use this situation as an opportunity to acquire a BattleLore app at reduced development cost. However, I don’t think that’s what will happen. FFG is very concerned about being able to fully support the products that it releases. Rebranding Viking Lords will not be the end of development and there would be significant cost to ongoing support. I doubt that they would expect to sell enough to make it worthwhile.
Hard for FFG to support a product line when they themselves haven’t released ANYTHING new in over 6 months time frame. And there was suppose to be something new at GenCon..again nothing. Basically they are just trying to protect the “Battlelore” name for their worthless release of Westlos. And sadly, that game is NOT even close to Battlelore, not even in name.