Notch Challenges Bethesda to a Quake-Off

Scrolls

Oh snap. Things are getting real over at Mojang.

A couple of weeks back, Bethesda hit Mojang up with a bit of a legal dispute, stating that their upcoming game Scrolls was going to confuse consumers about the much bigger Bethesda game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Sort of poor form on Bethesda’s part.

Anyway, to clear up this debacle, Notch has made a gentleman’s wager: if Bethesda can beat Mojang in a 3-v-3 Quake 3 match, then Notch will change the name of Scrolls to anything Bethesda wants. If Mojang wins, Bethesda drops the lawsuit.

Personally, I hope Bethesda jumps on this. It’s brilliant PR for them, whether or not they win or lose the match. On top of that, how entertaining would it be to see some sort of stream of this?

Source – The Word of Notch

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8 thoughts on “Notch Challenges Bethesda to a Quake-Off”

  1. Haha that’s awesome! It would be cool if some of the top guys from Bethesda like Todd Howard played, I would totally watch a stream of this.

  2. Im sure its complicated and what not but I hope Bethesda accepts. Wouldnt it be great if developers squaring off became a trend?

  3. Id like to agree with your last statement on this, but I think Bethesda is too rooted to actually put all its legal eggs into a gaming basket such as this. Granted, I dont think Scrolls will take away from TES at all, really I dont, but I cant see a big company thats trying to be professional (can you be when suing?) leave it up to a game of Quake. If they do accept though, expect the major publicity eddy mentioned. I just cant see it happening though.

  4. [quote comment=”17431″]Id like to agree with your last statement on this, but I think Bethesda is too rooted to actually put all its legal eggs into a gaming basket such as this. Granted, I dont think Scrolls will take away from TES at all, really I dont, but I cant see a big company thats trying to be professional (can you be when suing?) leave it up to a game of Quake. If they do accept though, expect the major publicity eddy mentioned. I just cant see it happening though.[/quote]

    I agree with both of you. I feel like Mojang is doing the “Be silly and take it to the people” in hopes of shaming Bethesda into dropping it. It’s a sound tactic, but indicative of the sometimes juvenile nature of the video game industry.

    I would still love to see this, though.

  5. Friend posted this on my wall yesterday and I thought it was a good idea then and still think it is now. If you noticed on Notch’s site, he said no matter what he would be willing to put in a small text to say its not related to Bethesda’s game.

    I think that this might have come from a little bit of desperation on Notch’s part not wanting to get sued by anyone (understandable) but I think that this is actually a good way to solve a problem. If Bethesda takes up the challenge, then no one really loses (except Bethesda some money maybe).

    I’d like to see more disputes settled like this.

  6. I would love to see this, even just to hear that it happened, but I don’t think that Bethesda will jump on it.

  7. Not sure if trolling or just stupid, Mojang.

    I think Notch is just taking advantage of the huge size of Bethesda. Obviously, the person who runs Bethesda’s Twitter page can’t speak for the whole company, so expecting Bethesda to even responding to his “challenge” seems far-fetched to me.

    Notch isn’t taking his position seriously, you know? Its kind of like he’s just poking fun at this whole law suit because he considers himself “Indie” and not as quote-on-quote mainstream as other gaming companies.

    Come on, Mojang. Can we have a serious moment, just for once please?

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