The War Z was removed from Steam last week amid allegations that the game was released in an incomplete state, advertising features that weren’t yet implemented in the game—fraud, in other words. After many users complained to Valve about the game, they were forced to pull the game from the online digital distribution service and reimburse customers who had bought the game.
If that wasn’t enough to kill The War Z, the game may now be facing even more difficulties as we’ve just discovered (via warzscam.tumblr.com) that the game’s trademark has been suspended. ‘The War Z’ was registered on the United States Patent and Trademark Office on July 20, 2012, by OP Productions LLC, which published the game.
A quick search for the patent reveals that the trademark was suspended on November 15. The letter of suspension explains that the trademark was suspended due to similarities with World War Z, an upcoming film by Paramount Pictures, which is based on the Max Brooks novel of the same name.
The authors of the aforementioned Tumblr blog speculate that the very recent registration of the game serves as evidence that the game has only been in development for less than six months. While this is highly speculative, what isn’t speculative is the fact that the developers of The War Z have known about the trademark suspension for well over a month and have remained recalcitrant about their use of the name.
Should they game ever make a return, it’ll have to come back as something else.
