The developers of the game No Man's Sky defended the name of the company Sky

Release moved from June 21 to August 9

Who would have thought that the sci-fi game with the procedural generation of the open world No Man's Sky would cause any complaints to the British television company Sky.

It turns out that for three years, Sky UK Limited demanded licensing fees from the game developers or change the name of the game No Man's Sky on the grounds that it allegedly violates the registered trademark Sky ™!

Such legal claims may seem ridiculous, but this is not a joke. It was because of Sky claims that in 2014, Microsoft was forced to rename the SkyDrive cloud hosting service into OneDrive.
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Moreover, in 2015, a European Union court even denied Microsoft the registration of the Skype ™ trademark, since the “cloud element” in the Skype logo together with the consonant name “can easily be associated with the word“ sky ”.” Microsoft has filed an appeal.

Under the distribution of Sky and the developers got the game No Man's Sky from the company Hello Games . Fortunately, they managed to fend off the attacks of the trademark owner. On June 18, studio managing director Sean Murray told the good news that the studio was finally able to settle a legal dispute with Sky, which owns the word "sky."


“Three years of secret foolish legal nonsense are over,” he wrote. Better not tell.

Given the impact on Microsoft and three years of litigation with the developers of No Man's Sky , Sky 's appetites can only be envied. It seems that they are suing everyone who is just trying to use the word "sky" in any name.

By the way, the release of the long-awaited game No Man's Sky was originally scheduled for today, June 21, but it was postponed to August 9 . It is possible that this is due to the ongoing legal disputes, although Murray did not say anything about this. But to put the game on the market during a patent dispute, because of which the name of the game will have to change, at least unwise. In this case, the change of name will result in a larger amount, and Sky can increase the assessment of its “damage” from the illegal use of a registered trademark by an order of magnitude, and the amount of license fees will also increase significantly.

The game No Man's Sky is so much awaited that after reporting the postponement of the release to the managing director of the studio, Sean Murray, even began to receive threats of physical violence from fans.



No Man's Sky promises to be one of the best recent games in the science fiction genre. Gameplay No Man's Sky involves the study of outer space and planets, some of which can interact with various forms of extraterrestrial life, the extraction of resources, battles in space in various, randomly generated areas of the galaxy, the development and improvement of its own ship, the execution of tasks for "hunters behind the heads ".




As in the unreleased game Pegwars (the modern version of Elite), which was recently discussed at Geektimes , each area of ​​outer space and each planet in No Man's Sky will be unique, procedurally generated by predefined algorithms.




If the game was postponed for a month and a half due to legal claims, then the threats of physical violence in the next six weeks should not be directed to Sean Murray, but to the legal department of Sky UK Limited .

In general, the Sky company got a pretty good job - if you own a Sky ™ trademark, then there are many options for additional earnings. For example, you can demand not only royalties, but also compensation for moral damage. Judge for yourself, because even the phrase "no one's sky" is formally an insult to the legitimate shareholders, who rightfully own "Sky"!

However, in the actions of lawyers there is a positive aspect. "That's the real reason why Skynet never showed up," joked Sean Murray.