Yes, Sky TV claims to own the word “Sky”, and almost forced No Man’s Sky to change its name.
Frivilous lawsuits over who owns what words crop up every so often in the gaming world. There was the one with Candy Crush Saga and “Candy”, and the one with EA and Ubisoft over the word “Ghost”. The latest such case concerns open-world space explorer No Man’s Sky, and British broadcasting network “Sky TV” – who claims to own the word “Sky”.
Thankfully common sense has prevailed this time, and Hello Games boss Sean Murray has confirmed that after a three-year-long secret legal battle, SkyTV has agreed to settle, allowing the game to keep its name.
“We finally settled with Sky (they own the word “Sky”),” Tweeted Murray. “We can call our game No Man’s Sky. 3 years of secret stupid legal nonsense over.”
If you are right now scoffing at your computer monitor, thinking “Of course common sense would prevail! There is no way a court would rule in Sky’s favor over the word ‘Sky’,” then it may interest you to know that in January 2014, Sky forced Microsoft to change the name of its cloud-storage service from Skydrive to Onedrive.
So No Man’s Sky will continue to be No Man’s Sky (instead of No Man’s One), at least until some crackpot claims to own the word “Man”.
Source: Twitter
