Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/01/19/atari-files-for-trademark-on-rogue-a-44-year-old-game-it-did-not-make-and-does-not-appear-to-own.html
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As long as they leave NetHack alone…
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Atari’s already a shambling zombie brand, is this incarnation going to be an “IP/patent trol” outfit? Are they planning on siccing their legal teams on the incredibly wealthy and lucrative sector of indie roguelike games?
Edit: I can’t write the word T-R-O-L-L without it turning into “trolley”? What?
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wow, i haven’t seen that sceen in a long time. you can tell it’s real, because the level is 4. that game, and it’s randomness, made it near impossible to get very far
i think i still have my copy on 5 1/4 somewhere. well, the bit rot that used to be rogue anyway.
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Who needs a disk?
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i know, i know. i also have shelves full of books. i was old before my time. and now it is my time, and i’m still old.
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The BBS censors the word to discourage people from using it.
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While the post seems to imply that Rogue was commercially developed, it was actually originally a freely distributed executable on BSD Unix by the listed creators before it got commercialized. It was my primary distraction when I was supposed to be working on class programming assignments back in the day because it was just sitting there on the system.
You can install the (somewhat) original version on Debian systems today as part of the bsdgames-nonfree package. I still play it on occasion when I am in procrastinate mode.
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Much like Zork.
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Presenting Atari’s latest Character-inspired NFT: * .
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That’s a gem of an idea.
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The genre is “roguelikes”, not “roguelites”.
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It’s both.
Roguelites tend to keep more progress on death.
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Honestly I had never seen the word “roguelite” until today. What does “keep more progress on death” mean?
Instead of getting completely wiped, you may have money to buy things, your level may have increased things like that. You don’t start from zero, you do get more powerful for the next run.
Hades, Rogue Legacy, Dead Cells are all examples.
Or what I’m playing now:
ETA: I’ve been gaming almost 45 years. I no longer have the patience to deal with games that don’t value your time.
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Atari files for trademark on Rogue, a 44-year old game it did not make and does not appear to own
It feels very “on-brand” for the new “Atari” that this seems to make no sense, but also potentially makes total sense in the context of what Atari is now, i.e. a holding company for a bunch of semi-random “properties,” to which they have a very tenuous claim, and whose value is almost entirely limited to having a trademark on certain words in the context of video games. (Because in the case of the games, they’re old and primitive and so heavily cloned, imitated, elaborated upon and improved by multiple generations of games, the original games themselves have no value anymore.)
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“blockchain software technology and smart contracts"
Either one of which requires massively more processing power and provides infinitely less utility than the original game code.
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Man I used to play net hack in the early 2000s. I never beat it but it was fun.
So it looks like the Atari Rouge doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the old game other than the name? Did Bridgestone keep up the trade mark with the new game they put out? As I understand it, trademarks lapse if you don’t keep them active.
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They planning on suing every MUD ever too? Good luck, there’s going to be about ten thousand games with the same look and feel if you also don’t scratch the surface on them…
I’m playing NetHack right now!
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