DieselStormers forced to change name after legal loss

Clothing brand Diesel has prevailed in its legal tussle with the makers of DieselStormers.

It was revealed in July of last year that the Italian fashion label had taken action against developer Black Forest Games as its brand trademark covered it for assorted non-fashion uses, including video games. As a result Diesel alleged the game caused a likelihood of confusion” for customers.

The studio now says that Europe’s Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market has sided with Diesel and denied the registration request for DieselStormers.

This decision has caught us with our pants down,” Black Forest’s MD Adrian Goersch said. We are quite surprised that our trademark application has been formally denied.

We are no multinational corporation, we cannot fight this decision, even though, frankly, it is a disaster with indie marketing as difficult as it is today. But the history of this game and our company as a whole has been marked with tough challenges and we will manage to overcome this one as well. First of all, we will make sure everyone will be able to keep playing the game, then we’ll come back with a new name.”

DieselStormers was released in Steam Early Access in January 2014.

Just to make sure you get the whole ‘pants down’ thing, Black Forest have also released the following image: