Squanchtendo Games rebrands ahead of The Game Awards announcement

Virtual reality outfit Squanchtendo Games has rebranded ahead of a big announcement at tonight’s Games Awards.

Squanchtendo Games, founded by Rick & Morty co-creator and Epic Games executive producer Tanya Watson last year, will undergo the transformation to Squanch Games, ditching the portmanteau to Japanese developers Nintendo.

The company worked with studio Crows Crows Crows on virtual reality title Accounting, but ahead of the announcement of its first real title, announced during The Game Awards pre-show, they’ve made the step to change their name.

There’s been no public mention of Nintendo querying or challenging the name.

The company’s blog post discussing the change is pretty wild, but includes some reasoning behind the decision: "We recently discovered a video game related company with a similar name to our former name," it reads. "We never could have predicted the discovery of a video game entity with such a similar name. What a surprise to us. We were shocked and surprised.

"So we decided in order to avoid confusion we are changing the back half of our name. We are now Squanch Games. Hooray."