Activision is currently suing an indie game developer for making a game called “Warzone” back in 2017.
Randy Ficker, the indie developer behind the original Warzone game is now facing a lawsuit from Activision despite releasing his game way before Call of Duty Warzone. According to Randy, he has been making games as an independent developer for over 10 years now. In that period he only published two titles.
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The first one was Warlight and the second entry was its sequel Warzone. Even though both of them came out way before CoD Warzone’s official announcement, Activision still sued him over the “Warzone” trademark dispute.
“This game has been my full-time job and only source of income for a decade. I have no employees, I make Warzone all by myself and hope that I can continue to work on it for the rest of my life.”, Randy states.
Trademark law clearly indicates that whoever uses the name first gets the right to use it. However, Activision still sued this small creator and threatened his livelihood in the process.
The Lawsuit
On April 8th, 2021, Activision filed a lawsuit against Warzone.com seeking to remove Warzone.com’s rights to the mark Warzone. You can read the full lawsuit here.
The creator behind the turn-based strategy game Warzone is a smaller entity compared to big names publishers like Activision. Randy needs help to get lawyers in order to fight this case in court. As a result, Randy started a GoFoundMe to pay for the lawyer fees.
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You can help him by donating here. So far, the fundraiser manages to raise around $12.211, as of writing. The total goal is to reach at least $50k. The original Warzone fans are coming in droves to support this indie dev in his legal dispute against Activision.
