King is a big name in the area of casual, mass-appeal gaming. They seem to specialise in match-3 games like the popular Candy Crush Saga… which makes it all the more confusing when you hear that they filed a ‘Notice of Opposition’ for the use of ‘Saga’ in the game… Banner Saga?

The notice basically says that because King make use of the word ‘Saga’ that Banner Saga is not allowed to use it themselves for their game as players might ‘confuse’ the two games. As mentioned above, Candy Crush Saga is a match-3 game in the vein of similar games such as Bejeweled (although Bejeweled is more of a match-4 last time I checked…), you swap the ‘candies’ get a match, they vanish and more drop down to fill the board. Banner Saga on the other hand is a game inspired by Nordic tales and has a rich RPG-style to the play. So either someone at King has never played or heard anything about Banner Saga or else someone in their legal department has gone mad.

When contacted with questions about the notice King said that they had applied for a video game patent on the word ‘saga’ and claimed not to be targeting Banner Saga because it bore any resemblance to their own game, but purely because they needed to be seen to be defending their copyright against the ‘real copycats’. In other words, this ridiculousness is purely because they wish to make an example of Banner Saga to warn off competition. Somehow, I think this action is not going to be taken seriously by the copycats who must be laughing themselves silly.

On the other side of the dispute, Banner Saga developer Stoic has said that the patent notice is putting the idea of a sequel to Banner Quest in jeopardy.

“We won’t make a Viking saga without the word Saga, and we don’t appreciate anyone telling us we can’t.” the studio said, noting that while King’s position on the issue remains unchanged the future of their planned sequel remains uncertain.

Earlier in the week Stoic’s Alex Thomas told Polygon “King.com claims they’re not attempting to prevent us from using The Banner Saga, and yet their legal opposition to our trademark filing remains.” and that the studio is ‘humbled’ to have received support and have others standing with them for the right to tell their own ‘saga’.

Sometimes you really can’t make this stuff up.