The British Sky Broadcasting Group has always been notoriously protective of its namesake, and it was no different with the upcoming video game No Man’s Sky.
In a post on Twitter, Hello Games’ Sean Murray tweeted that a settlement had been reached with Sky Television, as the game had been in legal murky waters for the past three years.
Yay! We finally settled with Sky (they own the word "Sky"). We can call our game No Man's Sky. 3 years of secret stupid legal nonsense over
— Sean Murray (@NoMansSky) June 17, 2016
This comes as incredibly good news for gamers impatiently awaiting the release of No Man’s Sky, as it has been hotly anticipated since it was announced back in 2013. The game has run into a few delays, but that hasn’t seemed to temper demand. Many hopefuls are voicing their concerns online, wondering if it was this issue with Sky that brought about the recent two month delay. Some were so upset about this recent delay that death threats were sent to the development team.
The game’s concept is incredibly unique and novel. It’s a procedurally generated universe with over 18 quintillion planets for players to explore. It’s so massive and expansive that it’s near impossible for two players to travel to the same planet. Players can claim planets, excavate resources, and trade among one another.
Sean Murray made an appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and demonstrated the massive scope of the game. As Colbert put it, “it’s beautiful to look at and awe-inspiring like the night sky — to know the vastness and the capability of it.”
This isn’t the Sky group’s first foray into trademark infringement. Most notably, Sky was able to get Microsoft to change the name of its cloud storage service Skydrive to Onedrive. This came to the chagrin of many Microsoft fans that had become fond of the Skydrive name. But it seemed to work out when Microsoft released the Xbox One and adopted the Universal Windows 10 platform. Essentially, everything became one.
