MicroProse, MegaTestes

From the Wikipedia article on MicroProse, known for games such as "Gunship" and "Civilization", here's something that made me laugh for the brazen nature of it.

First, a little backstory, again just from Wikipedia. First was a board game called Civilization, made by the Hartland Trefoil company. Another company, Avalon Hill, got a license to sell the game in the US. These events were both circa 1980.

Fast forward to 1991, when a PC game called Civilization comes out. Made by Microprose, which went so far as to license the title from Avalon Hill despite the different media, the game was a smashing success.

But Avalon Hill developed its own designs on the PC market, and circa 1997 wanted to make a PC version of its Civilization game (which by this point was called "Advanced Civilization"). So it was that in 1997 Avalon Hill rescinded the MicroProse name license, handed that over to computer game maker Activision, and together with Activision sued MicroProse.

(Now, this to my mind is the problem with licensing anyway. If it is rescinded for any reason or no reason at all, you are screwed.)

Now obviously, the Avalon Hill folks . . . had they not been bastards . . . would have noted that they had already licensed the name, so they could've released their game by another name. However, they wanted to capitalize on the work MicroProse had done to make the name a legend in the PC world, and of course Activision wanted the same thing. So they wanted to call their game the same name in the hopes that people would buy it not realizing it was some board-game-on-the-PC crap.

This is why the law sucks sometimes . . . but then it does give us entertaining stories like this:

In November 1997 MicroProse was sued by both Avalon Hill (who had the US publishing rights to the name Civilization) and Activision for copyright infringement. MicroProse responded by buying Hartland Trefoil, which had used the Civilization name in early game products and then sued Avalon Hill and Activision for trademark infringement and unfair business practices as a result of Activision's decision to develop and publish Civilization computer games. [...] Under the terms of the settlement MicroProse became the sole owner of the rights of the name Civilization [...]

In other words, Avalon Hill acted like they owned the name in the PC world, so MicroProse responded by buying the real originator in Avalon's board game world, and then sued Avalon and Activision.

It is the legal version of "bring it on, mofo!" I love it. MicroProse completely made Avalon Hill and Activision their prison bitch, and rightly so.