According to a press release that's been doing the rounds, the upcoming Beowulf movie adaptation from Ubisoft means that German-based 4Head Studios (The Guild 2) has had to discontinue a game of the same name.
Strangley, however, Ubisoft, appears to know nothing about it; at least the contacts we spoke to inside Ubi don't. "I'm afraid we don't have any information about this", SPOnG was told when we contacted Ubisoft.
4Head Studios, rather than continue work on the its take on the ancient epic, has - apparently - sold rights to the "the project's core properties including trademarks, Internet domains, and other assets", to Paramount - the production company behind the film.
Gustaf Stechmann who, according to the press release, is the game's (at 4Head not Ubisoft) executive producer, is quoted as saying, "With the announcement of Ubisoft's official game based on the movie and the conceivable competitive situation, we were seeing publishers unwilling to support our game.
"We thus lacked the resources needed to drive the project's development forward. Luckily, we had the older rights to the use of the name. The buy-out deal with Paramount was therefore the logical exit strategy."
Given that the rights in question relate to a millennium-old character from an epic poem, it's only really the name 'Beowulf' that could have been trademarked for use. It may be that Paramount effectively offered 4Head a lump sum to not publish its game. It maybe something totally different, we doubt it.
Later on, it must be said, the press release gets a bit strange. The sentence, "Game developer 4HEAD Studios had become financially unstable and was recently acquired by German publishing house DTP", ran a couple of alarm bells. It seems like a strange thing to say in your own press release - it's not exactly good publicity.
Meanwhile, 4Head's website seems to be non-existent, while the big bod quoted, Gustaf Stechmann, has no mention of 4Head in his biography for a Liepzig event he took part in.
For that matter, why would a company feel the need to publicise the discontinuation of one of its projects? One obvious reason would be petulance. A more likely reason would be that part of a settlement involves advertising the fact.
Which is not to say this is necessarily bogus. It all just seems a bit, well, odd...
One way or the other, the game isn't happening. The Ubisoft game, however, is. Ubisoft's released the trailer below to pimp the game's release this Friday. Enjoy!
Strangley, however, Ubisoft, appears to know nothing about it; at least the contacts we spoke to inside Ubi don't. "I'm afraid we don't have any information about this", SPOnG was told when we contacted Ubisoft.
4Head Studios, rather than continue work on the its take on the ancient epic, has - apparently - sold rights to the "the project's core properties including trademarks, Internet domains, and other assets", to Paramount - the production company behind the film.
Gustaf Stechmann who, according to the press release, is the game's (at 4Head not Ubisoft) executive producer, is quoted as saying, "With the announcement of Ubisoft's official game based on the movie and the conceivable competitive situation, we were seeing publishers unwilling to support our game.
"We thus lacked the resources needed to drive the project's development forward. Luckily, we had the older rights to the use of the name. The buy-out deal with Paramount was therefore the logical exit strategy."
Given that the rights in question relate to a millennium-old character from an epic poem, it's only really the name 'Beowulf' that could have been trademarked for use. It may be that Paramount effectively offered 4Head a lump sum to not publish its game. It maybe something totally different, we doubt it.
Later on, it must be said, the press release gets a bit strange. The sentence, "Game developer 4HEAD Studios had become financially unstable and was recently acquired by German publishing house DTP", ran a couple of alarm bells. It seems like a strange thing to say in your own press release - it's not exactly good publicity.
Meanwhile, 4Head's website seems to be non-existent, while the big bod quoted, Gustaf Stechmann, has no mention of 4Head in his biography for a Liepzig event he took part in.
For that matter, why would a company feel the need to publicise the discontinuation of one of its projects? One obvious reason would be petulance. A more likely reason would be that part of a settlement involves advertising the fact.
Which is not to say this is necessarily bogus. It all just seems a bit, well, odd...
One way or the other, the game isn't happening. The Ubisoft game, however, is. Ubisoft's released the trailer below to pimp the game's release this Friday. Enjoy!
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