Yesterday, we wrote about a mod-management tool called Gmod. As many PC Gamer readers pointed out, its name creates confusion with GMod, fans' loving nickname for sandbox game Garry's Mod. "Isn't that a trademark infringement?" wondered some fans. The confusion has sparked a bit of an investigation, but now Garry's Mod creator himself, Garry Newman, has come forward with some interesting information on the name mix-up.
In an interview with VG24/7, Newman admitted that Olympus Games actually owns the name—and that the name confusion has been a contentious issue not just among gamers, but also between the two developers.
“It’s actually the other way around," Newman said. "They own the trademark for ‘gmod’ and have threatened to take us to court if we don’t other buy it off them—along with all their domains and Twitter accounts—or post a press release pointing out we’re not affiliated, along with a permanent link on garrysmod.com and our twitter, and force the community not to abbreviate Garry’s Mod to GMod.
"Garry’s Mod pre-dates their trademark, as does the abbreviation of Garry’s Mod to GMod. As a bonus our game is called Garry’s Mod—not GMod. It’s only occasionally abbreviated to GMod out of convenience."
Newman feels that the people behind the mod-management tool should've rebranded long ago to avoid confusion, rather than traverse this rocky legal territory now. However, Skylar Kreisher from the Gmod team says there's another side to the story, which we'll be hearing about soon in their next Kickstarter update. We've also contacted Kreisher directly, and will inform our readers if we hear anything back.
