u/WombatusMighty

https://preview.redd.it/hhwo8uf6vf9h1.jpg?width=460&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8c1597dcac4bc774122a1e27fc6ad1dae687149c

A German dev claimed a trademark for the name "solarpunk", for a game that has little to nothing to do with solarpunk. It's a generic survival game, where you destroy the environment (!), with some robotics and solar cells, but has otherwise nothing to do with the name, the movement or the culture. This is cottage core at best, there

I find it incredibly cheap and arrogant to trademark the name for an entire philosophy and movement, especially when the dev has never contributed to it and the game doesn't even touch the ideas of solar punk.

Every definition of solarpunk is about living in balance with nature, about community and sharing resources, about counterculture and post-capitalism (the punk part).
Taking the name of a movement & philosphy, a common public good that has been around already since 2008, and restricting others from using it solely out of financial interests is complete opposite of everything solarpunk stands for.

Going by the definition from the Wikipedia Solarpunk page:

>Solarpunk is a literary, artistic, and social movement, closely related to the hopepunk movement,[3] that envisions and works toward actualizing a sustainable future interconnected with nature and community.[4][5][6] The "solar" represents solar energy as a renewable energy source and an optimistic vision of the future that rejects climate doomerism,[7] while the "punk" refers to do it yourself and the countercultural, post-capitalist, and sometimes decolonial aspects of creating such a future.[8]

This trademark, if enforced, will prevent anyone else from using the word Solarpunk in their video game ... either in the title, even if not a single world like "Solarpunk world", in the games description or prominently someplace in the game itself.

This effectively stops dead any future game development about solarpunk, because not only can the devs not use the word anymore for recognition, but more so because they have to be afraid to be sued if they want to even just use the name for description.

.

Link to the EU trademark: https://www.tmdn.org/tmview/#/tmview/detail/EM500000018840678

Germany trademark: https://register.dpma.de/DPMAregister/marke/registerHABM?AKZ=018840678&CURSOR=0

US registration is pending: https://tmsearch.uspto.gov/search/search-results/79446547

Canada trademark: https://www.tmdn.org/tmview/#/tmview/detail/CA500000246477700

At today's State of Unreal keynote, Marcus Wassmer took the stage to talk about Epic's development plans for Unreal Engine 6 and discussed key pillars of their vision for the future. It's worth reading his blog post for the full picture, but in here are the major highlights:

• Unreal Engine 6 will see UEFN and UE5 converge into a single editor. You will still be able to ship traditional games as you do today, but UE6 is ultimately designed to build large-scale live service games and ecosystems that are increasingly interoperable with one another.
• The gameplay framework is changing significantly. Actors and Blueprints will remain in version 6.0, but they will both eventually be deprecated in favor of Scene Graph and Verse, respectively.
• Epic wants to enable "content, code, and economies to become portable and interoperable across games, ecosystems, and engines through open standards."
• AI-assisted development is a big part of the UE6 story. The experimental MCP introduced in Unreal Engine 5.8 will eventually become a key part of the development pipeline. Epic sees AI models and related tools "playing a central role in helping you build content faster while maintaining the creative control you need."
• Unreal Engine 6 Early Access is planned for late 2027, with the full releasing coming late 2028–mid 2029.

More details will be shared in the future.

I am inclined to believe sponsoring Vincent Lapierre was an honest mistake and that Proton wants to do better in the future.

But given Protons claim there wasn't any vetting done at all and the CEOs comments in this sub about "both sides" and the need to sponsor people on both the left and right ... I need to know this was just a one time mistake and you haven't sponsored other (far-right) extremist figures as well.

I'm a long time unlimited plan paying customer and I still feel unwell about this situation, given I do not know if this was just an honest one-time mistake or common occurrence.

So to clear this up for good, please make a public list of all the people you have sponsored recently. Thank you.