Stellar Blade and Sony in Some Legal Trouble, and It Has Nothing to do With Censorship
Sony faced a weird lawsuit for Stellar Blade, which claims a multimedia company with the same name has been suffering since the game was released.
- Stellar Blade is one of Sony's most popular PlayStation-exclusive games, released in 2024.
- While this game has already gone through different hardships, this time it has faced a lawsuit for its name.
- Aside from Stellar Blade, another Shift Up game was accused of having plagiarized characters that the company resolved recently.
It’s a fight between Stellar Blade and Stellarblade. Though it sounds weird, that’s what Sony is currently facing. Before Astro Bot, another PlayStation-exclusive game that has earned massive popularity among PS5 fans is Stellar Blade. Though the game has encountered loads of issues and disputes before and after its release, this current trouble is something unique as it dragged in a lawsuit.
Stellar Blade has presented players with an impressive journey through the post-apocalyptic earth where Eve has to face enemies at every step and fight bosses to progress through the storyline. After almost five months of successful runs, the game received a major obstacle.
Sony Sued by Stellarblade LLC. For Ruining Its Business
Since the game was released, Eve’s journey hasn’t been smooth. Whether it is some in-game elements or some censorship issues, something has always been there to bother Sony. However, these problems have now reached a new level with a company with the same name filing a lawsuit against Sony for using the name.
According to the reports by IGN, this lawsuit was filed by a Louisiana-based company named Stellarblade LLC. It is a “multimedia entertainment services” provider company that has been in existence since 2006.
The founder of the company, Griffith Chambers Mehaffey, filed this lawsuit earlier this month in a Louisiana court against Sony, Shift Up, and an unnamed insurance company for using the identical name for the game.
As the reports reveal, the claims suggest that Stellarblade LLC’s business is getting affected by Sony’s third-person action-adventure game of the same name. What Mehaffey stated is that previously, when users searched for ‘Stellar Blade,‘ they used to find the company and its works, but since Sony’s game came into existence, the internet has been full of game clips and news. Therefore, searching ‘Stellar Blade‘ now shows the game and not Stellarblade LLC.
He even claimed that the trademarks for both, including the logo, are pretty similar. Specifically, he mentioned the style of the “S” and the color of the logo are “confusingly similar.”
However, this is not the first time Shift Up is facing troubles for its games this year. It has previously settled another dispute.
Shift Up Already Tackled Plagiarism Accusation for Goddess of Victory: Nikke
Even before Stellar Blade was released, Shift Up handled a plagiarism accusation for its other renowned game, The Goddess of Victory: Nikke.
Released at the beginning of 2023, this game has earned significant fame among gamers, especially because of its large collection of “waifus.” However, later two of these character designs were claimed to have been copied from a Japanese artist’s creations.
However, after a long discussion and dispute, Shift Up finally accepted that it had copied characters without giving proper credit to the original artist. Even the company has released an apology post to admit its fault publicly, on September 24, 2024.
It has declared to remove plagiarized characters from The Goddess of Victory: Nikke to avoid any further issues, along with keep using of one playable character with the permission of the original artist.
However, the Stellar Blade issue is pretty different. Though Stellarblade LLC was established long ago, it filed the trademark five months after Sony did. Therefore, this issue is indeed complicated at this point.
