Creators of "Playdate" console pressure Playdate event into changing name
32 replies, posted
Playdate, now Playdate Pop Up, is a game showcase meets miniature event that runs as part of the LA zine fest.
It’s been around for a few years now. It’s one of my favorite because
of how low-key it is, and how it consistently showcases personal, niche,
strange, weird, and wonderful games from a wide spectrum of devs.
[...]
Last year I was one of the organizers for Playdate. That year we
received an email from Panic basically telling us we can’t use the name
anymore because it would be a shame if our event got confused with what
they are doing.
[...]
We’ve been calling ourselves Playdate for years. To me this is akin to
King owning the word “candy” and arbitrarily enforcing that ownership.
If you are truly a celebration of “weird” you will recognize and respect
the “weird” culture that you are functioning in. This behavior is
“paving over” rather than being part of it.
[,...]
Playdate (us, proper) is small, and makes 0 money. The organizers even
lose money on it just to keep it running because they believe in what it
represents. We cannot fight this. Panic can easily sue us into
oblivion. If it were up to me, however, I would fight it even if it
meant being obliterated because I am tired of seeing this happen.
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-05-28-playdate-handheld-pressured-playdate-event-to-change-name-says-organizer
http://www.nathalielawhead.com/candybox/playdate-the-la-zine-fest-weird-games-and-what-it-means-for-playdate-to-lose-its-name
It seems that this project was not as indie and innocent as it seemed.
How fucking pretentious could you be? Apparently their PR strategy is arrogance.
they are selling a 150$ tamagotchi, you NEED to have your head in your ass to ask that much
https://twitter.com/playdate/status/1133397153437560835
"Oh, we're gonna be sarcastic, and we still won't make any statement about our apology except a tweet"
"Our product is going to be so cool and popular its going to overshadow the poor little ones, and we pressured them to change their name because theyre so awesome!!!" fuck right off for trying to use sympathetic points to justify being dickheads
This was the original email:
https://twitter.com/cabel/status/1133369584663244802
"Oopsie, looks like your event has the same name as our dumb project, please change your name before we make a boo-boo and send our boring lawyers to your door!"
This is some Discord Support level of condensing for a fucking legal threat.
Sending that email was a terrible idea but judging from the ongoing discussion in the thread, he seems pretty genuinely regretful, at least more than the stereotypical executive who thinks it's his god-given right to push people around because the government issued him ownership of a word. The language tries to be jovial but comes across like mafioso talk like "we just got this lil copyright patent here and we dun want there to any 'accidents', right my friend?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubU-dB8B-94
Best thing I've ever made.
That email though, jesus fuck. What is with companies lately with their casual passive aggressiveness as of late?
Its like they're all trying to be Discord's PR or some shit.
Saying you're sorry is so 2016, everyone's Wendy's Twitter except doing it wrong, now.
"Don't you guys have phones?"
"Haha just a little legal threat between friends"
"[Anything Todd Howard said about Fallout 76 in the last 9 months]"
"[Anything Tim Sweeney said in the last five years]"
"[Randy Pitchford, full stop]"
What a fucking worthless device and worthless company
If it's true that the play date event has been running for years then the basis for this lawsuit is total bullshit, because the device is only recent
I was kinda excited for the console, guess i won't be supporting it now huh. Cunts.
Pretty shitty of them to go to a group who have been using their chosen name for four years (!!!!) and tell them to change it. Fuck, you'd think that they would have googled the name to see if it was in use and found Playdate Pop Up.
"our product might overshadow theirs"
yeah I think these guys might be overestimating how popular their product is going to be.
Wow that shot an already niche product in the foot among the people who would actually want to buy it.
I don't think I'd call the email passive aggressive at all, in fact it just seems like a very good natured dialogue that needed to happen considering the overlap in demographic between the two Playdates
I'm v. confused at this outrage. Just because the Playdate console is new in the public eye doesn't mean this is some nobody trying to pressure a small event into obeying, they're about to launch a console that is going to probably take over a majority of Google hits for the term 'Playdate'. Not only was it smart to shoot this tiny event an email, it's a very nice gesture that not many companies would do
Considering their product has been in development for 4 years or so as well, that's probably what sparked the email?
I was gonna make a contrarian post in defense of this thing but after looking into it and reading articles like this where journalists are waxing poetic about how revolutionary it is something feels really fishy about all the hype surrounding the Playdate. Like I think it looks like a pretty cool little gizmo and I'm usually the first to champion weird stuff like this but all the coverage and excitement seems wildly disproportionate to the fact that it's just a random new handheld that isn't fundamentally much different from the dozens of other third party handhelds that are peddled on Kickstarter every year. And combining that with the fact that the developers were so arrogant that they forced a name change because they were afraid they would "overshadow" this established convention... like how exactly can you be that sure that your random gizmo is gonna take off like that?
Not gonna whip out the 'collusion' word out just yet but a lot of these major game news sites seem to know something we don't about this.
The last time a niche, barely-known product got disproportionately loud and positive press coverage, an email account was hacked, the number of dicks sucked was counted, and then the Internet caught fire for five years. I'm willing to bet there's some dicksucking here, even if it's more the metaphorical and less the physical kind.
I'm curious what you're referring to.
The origins of Gamergate, beginning with the hacking and leaking of Zoe Quinn's emails and the beginning of the Five Guys scandal that quickly snowballed into a general hunt for corruption in games journalism (when everyone knew there'd be plenty to find as there always has been).
Then it became a culture war.
The creators are already well known for publishing Firewatch and Untitled Goose Game, and creating a few successful Mac apps. Also, several famous game designers have already been confirmed to be making games for the handheld. I don't think there's a conspiracy going on.
Do you think we'll ever get a sequel?
I don't know, I don't really feel natural that since the moment this device was announced we have already articles from numerous sources as "a console that could shake the video game industry", "the next great handheld console" and even being on the cover of a know magazine, there is a at least a big marketing scheme going on.
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