Wasteland Kings renamed Nuclear Throne

Vlambeer's randomly-generated arcade action title has been renamed following an amicable agreement between the indie pair and Wasteland 2 developer inXile.

“We will be renaming Wasteland Kings for a variety of reasons that will soon be in the press everywhere,” Vlambeer’s Rami Ismail said during a session at Eurogamer Expo this weekend.

“Wasteland Kings, in the future, will be known as Nuclear Throne.”

In a blog post spotted by DSB, Vlambeer explained that inXile has contacted the indie and expressed concern about the similarities between the titles Wasteland Kings and Wasteland 2. To both companies' credit, the dispute seems to have been resolved almost before it began by cool heads and good manners on both sides.

"We understand that American trademark law is pretty strict in that not defending a trademark weakens it. We realize that both games are set in a similar setting, that the names are similar and that InXile obviously felt the need to reach out. Although we aren’t sure Wasteland Kings and Wasteland are confusing enough for this to be an issue, both us and InXile really don’t want to spend development time on arguing over trivialities," Vlambeer wrote.

"Most of all, we appreciate that the first contact between us was by a normal employee, and not a lawyer. There was no extravagant Cease & Desist-letter, nor a threatening letter in an envelope labelled ‘URGENT’. The e-mail we received was short, amicable and to-the-point. It was followed up by a quick conversation on Skype, in which we established that it would be the right thing for us to change the name.

"This is the way business should work nowadays: between people, not companies, not lawyers, not departments. There’s so much paperwork between one and another that it’s easy for people to forget that they’re dealing with people instead of numbers and dossiers. Things can be friendly, rather than formal for the sake of formality."

Originally announced for PC only, Nuclear Throne is coming to Mac, PlayStation 4 and Vita as well. It's decided to be very open with development on this one, and even released a prototype recently.

Vlambeer is now best known for Ridiculous Fishing, but it also produced Super Crate Box and Luftrausers among many other smaller titles including - as I remind you yet again - the best game ever made.

Here's the full developer session:

Thanks, Gematsu.