Mojang is making a new game called Scrolls. But there is a lot of controversy surrounding it.
Bethesda has gone momentarily insane and sued Notch over Scrolls. Scrolls is a fantasy card/video game that Notch is developing with Mojang. To be more accurate though, it’s Beth’s publisher Zenimax Media doing the suing.
But does Bethesda have any legit complaints? Not particularly, as Scrolls is a generic fantasy setting. Bethesda can only win this if they manage to also sue and beat Dungeons and Dragons, Vindictus and about everyone under the sun who has this setting.
Updates: There have been significant updates to the situation on Scrolls. Notch is treating this as more or less of a joke on his twitter. He has proclaimed that he is ” Signing a deal with Orson Scott Card to make Scrolls a scifi adventure game instead to stop the confusion. We’re naming it The Ender Scrolls”.
Of course anyone who knows about the Ender’s Game understands the joke. There is no evidence that Notch will actually be changing it over to science fiction. A few outlets took it and ran with the story, in a fashion that was perhaps unwise.
There hasn’t been much said after this announcement, as Notch went and got married out of the blue. On a side note, players that bought in time on the Minecraft site could get an additional copy.
While Notch is sure that this is simply the lawyers flipping out over Scrolls, we can’t be sure of that. This could escalate into a huge, drawn out conflict.ZeniMax media isn’t in the right on their Scrolls lawsuit, but that doesn’t matter much in law.
If ZenMax media wants to they can draw this conflict out in court for a huge amount of time. They may not win, but it would seriously inconvenience the severely smaller Mojang games company. It may even lead to Scrolls never being released.
