Chooseco Chooses An Adventure In Bullying Indie Game Devs Over Trademark

from the pro-choice dept

Earlier this year, after Netflix released an iteration of its Black Mirror series entitled Bandersnatch, which allowed the viewer to choose their own story path through the narrative, the company behind the famed Choose Your Own Adventure books from our childhood sued. Chooseco, armed with a trademark registration for "Choose your own adventure", claimed that Bandersnatch infringed on that trademark, first because the film has a nod of homage to the literary series within the script, and second simply because many in the public compared the film with the books of their youth. Meanwhile, thanks to the renewed attention that Netflix gave CYOA books -- for FREE! -- , Chooseco inked a deal with Amazon to create CYOA style narratives for the Alexa device.

That success hasn't stopped Chooseco's bullying ways, however. Recently, itch.io's leadership has publicly warned indie game developers to stop describing their games as choose your own adventures on the site after Chooseco issued several takedowns of games that did so. In case you were concerned that the facts before the public didn't perfectly convey how absurd this all is, never fear:

Itch.io founder Leaf Corcoran told developers about the takedowns this afternoon. “Warning to any devs using the phrase ‘choose your own adventure’ to describe their games, Chooseco is issuing takedown notices,” he wrote on Twitter. Corcoran tells The Verge that the games include Purrfect Apawcalypse, an “apocalyptic dog dating choose your own adventure game”; a “choose your own dating sim text adventure” game called It’s a Date; an unofficial GameBoy game called Choose Your Own Adventure GB; and New Yorker writer Luke Burns’ A Series of Choose Your Own Adventure Stories Where No Matter What You Choose You Are Immediately Killed by a Werewolf, whose plot is self-explanatory.

Clearly, these indie games with mere descriptions in their summaries and/or game titles are a grave threat to the Chooseco empire. After all, what member of the public could possibly stave off confusion over a video game being accurately described as involving a choice in adventure without naturally assuming that this must be from the same company as the books of their childhood?

This is all stupid on many levels. Chooseco's trademark is at least partially descriptive. I know that's true, because some of the games that have been the victim's of this bullying have only used the trademark in their games'...you know...descriptions. That feels about as open and shut an answer as these questions tend to have. Add to that the fact that literature and Amazon Alexa narratives aren't the same as video games and I would question whether these are even in the same market as Chooseco products. Finally, I would also question whether there is a single iota of potential public confusion to consider here.

And, to be clear, the end result of this bullying thus far is part mockery by other publishers and part simply ignoring Chooseco entirely.

Mainstream publishers have found clever ways to get around the trademark. A Gravity Falls branching-choice book, for example, is billed as a “Select Your Own Choose-Venture” novel. And you can’t officially tag a game as “choose your own adventure” on Itch.io; it’s automatically converted to “interactive fiction.” Even so, an Itch.io search for “choose your own adventure” still turns up a lot of results. (The common abbreviation “CYOA” also apparently hasn’t triggered any notices.) It’s a widely accepted informal genre name, and Itch.io is a platform that favors offbeat, often free-of-charge games from independent developers.

Your bullying has resulted in mere mockery and dismissive waves. Turn to page 26 if you'd like to go to your room and think about what you've done, or turn to page 77 if instead you want to continue to make the world hate you with your bullying.

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Filed Under: choose, choose your own adventure, indie games, trademark

Companies: chooseco, itch.io