iPhone Game Edge by Mobigame Under Threat Again from Tim Langdell
6:26 am, October 24th, 2009, Craig Grannell
Under threat yet again: Edge by Mobigame.
We’ve reported before about the legal spat between Mobigame, makers of fine indie game Edge, and Tim Langdell, who appears to make his money by suing anyone daring to use the name Edge in a videogame, and makes rather spurious claims regarding how he ‘spawned’ almost any major property with the word ‘Edge’ in its title, including Edge magazine by Future Publishing, Marvel comic Edge, and, er, 1997 Anthony Hopkins movie turkey The Edge. (He’s also laughably stated in the past how he has come to an ‘understanding’ with a guitarist of a very popular rock band.) TIGSource has a great overview of the madness.
Edge returned to the App Store recently, and Langdell will next year be battling EA, a company that’s had enough. Rather than just dealing with issues relating to EA game Mirror’s Edge—Langdell started advertising a game called Mirrors (a game by) Edge, which still doesn’t exist, and yet was in no way an effort to promote mark confusion—EA’s aiming to have Langdell stripped of all his Edge-related marks.
EA’s documentation cites numerous examples of Langdell filing out-of-date and falsified specimens, and the fact Edge Games isn’t a viable commercial concern. (ChaosEdge offers running commentary regarding Langdell’s so-called commercial concerns—a Mythora ‘reissue’ they bought from Edge Games was a home-made burned disc; and despite Langdell claiming its game Racers had sold out, the second purchase ChaosEdge made days later had an order number only one higher than their pre-Racers order.) Last month, company spokesman Jeff Brown said: “While this seems like a small issue for EA, we think that filing the complaint is the right thing to do for the developer community.”
Sadly, Langdell still won’t back down. We today heard Mobigame’s Edge is again under threat, with Apple giving the company five days to respond to yet another threat from Langdell. If you’ve an iPhone or iPod touch, get in there fast, because chances are that Edge is about to vanish yet again, and it may take an EA battering in court next year for Langdell to finally stop harassing indie developers.
Edge is available on the App Store for $4.99. It’s really good, so go and buy it before it’s too late.
Posted by Craig Grannell in News, Opinions, Top stories, iPhone Apps | Comment on this article
This Tim Langdell guy sounds like some maniac..
Sayam Aggarwal, on October 24th, 2009 at 7:38 am
Edge is a great game! Graphics, sound, gameplay… all just about perfect! And it’s beautiful, too!
Hopefully this clown will go away!
Mr. Reeee, on October 24th, 2009 at 9:36 am
Definitely grab the game now while you can. It’s a lot of fun, great sound and music, and challenging, too.
David, on October 24th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
What a waste of DNA that guy is!
Can’t say I like EA much but I wish Trip Hawkins and crew all the best in shutting this clown up once and for all!
Best thing to do is leave the legal spats to the courts and rest of us stop talking about him, thereby depriving him of the publicity he so obviously craves to justify his rather sad and pathetic existence!
Fuzzypig, on October 24th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
I’m afraid you’re wrong, Fuzzypig. This isn’t about attention, it’s about bullying. Bullies have an easier time getting away with bullying when we ignore what they are doing. Langdell has been bullying small developers and trying to bully large developers for years now, and the lawsuit filed by EA is a result of indie developers standing together to shine some light on exactly what Langdell has been doing. A lot of the evidence submitted by EA that Langdell has possibly committed perjury came from crowd-sourced research done by the indie community, especially the Chaos Engine community and the TIGSource community.
AwesomeRobot, on October 24th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
Langdell should try actually DOING some creative work, instead of leeching off those who do.
Vimalakirti, on October 29th, 2009 at 6:59 pm
Finally finished Edge on Monday. Brilliant addictive game (am going back through all the levels trying to improve my scores!). Let’s hope EA manage to do a real number on Langdell….
Fearless Fred, on November 6th, 2009 at 11:54 am