HEROQUEST – Hasbro / Ludofilia GameZone

[delshieldsParticipant 118xp 1]

Yes indeed, mailed Gamezone minis, waiting to hear back. I’ll post update here too once I know.

 

[odinsgrandsonParticipant 4288xp 1]

So here is the legal position of Gamezone going into these negotiations:

1- Broke. I feel that it is beyond clear that didn’t have the money to deliver their game.

2- No legal ground against Hasbro. Since Hasbro used the Hero Quest name before the Gamezone trademark, they can continue to do so with no legal avenues for Gamezone to stop them, despite the trademark.

3- Intent to create brand confusion. If this went to court, it is extremely clear that Gamezone would lose. While Gamezone can use the trademark that they registered, calling it a 25th anniversary edition of the classic “Hero Quest” game is intentionally implying a connection between their game and the one Hasbro created. That’s not legal.

– So the only thing Gamezone has is a trademark that they take as a license to create brand confusion. Which is an odd one, because since their game was in production hell, there really wasn’t any fear that they’d get it to market to compete with Hasbro’s game.

They make it sound like they scored big with Hasbro- that maybe Hasbro has given them enough money to finish production in exchange for the name change. But they don’t say that, and I have learned not to trust things that Gamezone says or implies.

[onlyonepinman 18060xp 0]

About 10% of that is true.

They weren’t broke as the business continues trading even to this day, but they also didn’t have enough money to fulfil the Kickstarter.

They obviously had some sort of legal position against Hasbro in some territories (as a minimum, Spain, but from the press release it sounds like they also held it in other European territories).  If they had no legal position, Hasbro would have simply released their game and Gamezone would have been unable to prevent it or they would have taken Gamezone to court to put an end to their use of the trademark.  Neither of these things happened so we can probably assume Gamezone did indeed have a legal position, even if we don’t fully understand IP law, we can at least assume this based on the actions of the two companies.

It’s a stretch to say they were deliberately trying to create brand confusion because at the time they launched their crowdfunding campaign Heroquest, as a boardgame, no longer existed.  The trademark was owned in the USA by an RPG publisher as part of the Glorantha setting and that company also sold their trademark to Hasbro (this is also why the original Kickstarter was taken down).  Despite any other criticism people might have of Gamezone, they were very clear when they launched their crowdfunding that they weren’t Hasbro.  They legally held the Trademark “Heroquest” in Spain and were entitled, whether you personally like it or not, to produce a boardgame called Heroquest, even one that looked like a then defunct game (especially so, in fact, seeing as they were trying to release it celebrate the 25th anniversary).  They weren’t creating brand confusion because there was nothing else for it to be confused with.

I don’t think they’re trying to sound like they “scored big” with Hasbro because they don’t actually give ANY details at all about what the agreement with Hasbro entails.  We don’t know whether they sold the trademark or whether the deal is something else.

Gamezone have not been particularly good at communicating and are not trusted by backers of Heroquest.  Thus people are understandably not getting their hopes up.  You are at least correct on that count.

[angelicdespot 4689xp 1]

@delshields – did you hear back from them?

Their website says with remarkable understatement that:

“Both Backers and pre-sale customers have had to endure with extreme patience the continuous delays of the official launch of our board game. Finally, the foreseen delivery date by the European-based printing company is for the end of the first quarter of 2022. If all goes well, from that date we will start shipping your games.”
http://www.gamezoneminiatures.com/tienda/en/

I fear that “if all goes well” is doing a lot of heavy lifting…

And those of us inclined to swap to the Hasbro version have to pay to do so:

“Each box of the Hasbro Heroquest that is redeemed carries an additional cost of 20.80 euros, per unit… Shipping the Hasbro Heroquest from Seville to the address of each backer / pre-sale client does not entail any extra charge, shipping costs that were already paid will be used at the time.”
http://www.gamezoneminiatures.com/tienda/en/canje-hq/2739-canje.html

Looks like we’ve got until 19th December to decide, unless they run out of Hasbro copies first.

[delshieldsParticipant 118xp 1]

Yes @angelicdespot I heard back the exact same message that you posted.  Part of me looks at Hasbro Heroquest and goes “meh…I have the original and expansions – do I really need to pay early £20 for a vaguely upgraded version, OR do I take the risk on the Ludofilla version”?  With the Ludofilla version there are proposed many more characters and models etc, this is why I backed this in the first place back in the day it was marketed as Heroquest 25th Anniversary.  On GameZone it mentions that all proposed content will remain the same.  SO – I am actualy considering keeping with the TseuQuesT version….

[odinsgrandsonParticipant 4288xp 2]

I don’t think it is a stretch to say that Gamezone was interested in brand confusion. Contrast its presentation with the Heroquest RPG.

The color choices, the font choices, the subjects of the cover, the fact that it is a dungeon crawler and all that are a brand confusion issue. They want you to look at their box and think it has anything to do with the game from 1989 -and it officially doesn’t have anything to do with it. Calling it the 25th anniversary edition is nothing but brand confusion. Since it has nothing to do with the game from 1989, what anniversary is it referring to?*

*probably of the launching of the Kickstarter, but that’s assuming they can deliver by 2038)

[odinsgrandsonParticipant 4288xp 1]

@delshields- that’s awfully brave of you to consider sticking with TseuQuesT. I am still not confident that they’re going to actually deliver.

But I can see your point. I personally have little interest in playing with the 1989 rules for Hero Quest. I wanted very much for Hasbro to update the rules substantially, but I fear that in updating Hero Quest to current dungeon crawl standards, you lose anything that made it unique in the first place.

But I am glad that the fans that just wanted a reprint are getting it.

[delshieldsParticipant 118xp 1]

@odinsgrandson I hear you 100%  Its a risk but now I think I am decided to wait it out and see what happens with TseuQuesT.  Its probably more dumb than brave, but essentially the more I think about it I am just not interested in the Hasbro version as I have owned and loved the original since ’89.  The other version holds more interest for me but I also accept I could just be throwing my cash in the magic fire as it were.  I guess since I backed this version since 2017 and actually wrote off my investment, I am willing to keep my investment sitting with TseuQuesT as opposed to Hasbro Heroquest.  Either way – it does make me a more cautious invester than ever before so maybe I’ve also learned a valuable lesson along the way.

[odinsgrandsonParticipant 4288xp 1]

I hear you. That money was lost long enough ago that it probably doesn’t feel anything like throwing money at it now. And if the Hasbro version doesn’t appeal to you, why not?

I suppose the other thing you could do is get the Hasbro one and resell it to recoup your costs and pick up some other dungeon crawler. But flipping games is WORK (which is to say that’s why I probably wouldn’t do it).

[angelicdespot 4689xp 1]

I logged in to the website and found that it was all the way back in 2015 that I paid / backed the project!

I evidently was impressed with the figures (and I did know of the company from their work done prior to Heroquest) as I backed for two copies. As their current offer of exchanging a pledge for a copy of Hasbro’s Heroquest is limited to one per customer, I’m effectively forced to ‘remain invested’ in them but I have decided to get a Hasbro one too.

I’m actually less interested in the Hasbro version now than I was when they were running their campaign, both because of the ‘old school’ rules and because I don’t think the miniatures are as charming as the originals or as interesting and with a sense of style that Gamezone’s have.

But I suppose I’m hedging my bets. I can always get rid of it and make some money back. I might enjoy playing it with someone. Although I had basically given up hope of receiving a copy of Gamezone’s version, they might just manage to get something out to customers eventually… fingers crossed!

[onlyonepinman 18060xp 0]

Nobody said that it wasn’t in anyway related to the original Heroquest game – it was definitely related to it because they were trying to bring back the brand.  But when Gamezone announced their crowdfunding campaign the original Heroquest game, and thus the brand itself, was defunct.  Decades out if print.  Nobody at Hasbro or GW seemed to have any interest in reviving the brand and, had Gamezone been successful in their endeavour rather fucking it up as badly as they ended up doing, Hasbro most likely wouldn’t have bothered.  Gamezone were very clear about who they were and what it was that they were making.  It was intended to be a celebration of the original Heroquest game, an attempt to revive a long dead brand, and thus it was intentionally designed to look similar to the original.  But given that Heroquest the board game no longer existed by that point, there wasn’t a brand to confuse with.  They were certainly trying to claim that brand for their own, they weren’t trying to confuse anyone about who they were and what they were making.   Anyone who went into that campaign thinking it was a genuine GW, MB Games or Hasbro product is a fucking idiot.  There’s no more brand confusion with Heroquest than there is with the Mini automotive brand.

The Heroquest RPG on the other hand was deliberately trying to be it’s own thing.  It was absolutely nothing to do with the Heroquest board game being part of the Runequest RPG setting, so its branding was such that it was congruous with the parent product.   The two products’ use of trademark are not comparable

 

[onlyonepinman 18060xp 1]

@angelicdespot we have basically written off the Gamezone crowdfunder as a loss and they haven’t said anything to convince me otherwise.  Their comms was so bad for so long that it would probably be impossible for them to change that view now.  I agree about the miniatures, the GZ ones looked miles better, my brother has since bought the Hasbro one and the miniatures aren’t great and the styling of them isn’t really consistent across the set either.  The new Descent game from FFG beats the Hasbro Heroquest hands down, at least in terms of miniatures

Will GZ deliver?  I have to say I am still highly doubtful. If ever there was a company to whom the phrase “couldn’t organise a piss-up in a brewery” applied to, it’s Gamezone.  So my approach now is “I will believe it when I see it”

[angelicdespot 4689xp 0]

@onlyonepinman – I agree. While I’m not enthusiastic about the Hasbro game, I may as well have it rather than nothing, and I can decide what, if anything, to do with it later. And I don’t have the option of exchanging both copies, so I don’t have any choice but to just wait and see what happens.

[onlyonepinman 18060xp 1]

I played the Hasbro game last night and it’s alright.  The miniatures aren’t the best in the world but the game itself isn’t too bad.  It’s actually surprising how well it holds up seeing as they haven’t really changed the rules from the original all that much.

[odinsgrandsonParticipant 4288xp 1]

@onlyonepinman I honestly don’t see how you can think that Gamezone was up front about almost anything.

I agree that people who actually followed them to their final campaign must have known the situation. They had to know in order to have followed them through their previous cancelled campaigns. The last one was also the first campaign where they included a clause that called their game a tribute rather than new edition.

But it took Tabletop Gaming News that announcing that Gamezone only had secured the trademark to use the title in Spain before Gamezone would cop to it.

Copyright laws are expensive to enforce and not very rewarding, so you are right that Hasbro may not have bothered. I think that’s different from saying that Hasbro wouldn’t have had a very strong case if it had come to that.

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