Ion Fury (née Maiden) Release Date Set for August 15th

Remember Ion Maiden, the retro-FPS where you play as Shelly “Bombshell” Harrison, bomb defusal expert by day, archnemesis to evil transhumanist mastermind Dr. Jadus Heskel at night? Well now it’s called Ion Fury. Why would someone change the name of their game so close to release? Isn’t that a surefire way to confuse interested parties? Why yes it is, and it’s because the developers had to soothe the rotting corpse of a once-relevant heavy metal band and their raging hard-on for corporate justice.

That’s a lousy reason to make changes, but what can you do? The erections of the rich will only be sated by the blood of the poor. So it was written, so it shall be. Thankfully, in this case, the game had spent quite a lot of time in early access and there’s already a large community built around it, so it probably won’t suffer too much. Here’s what Mike Nielsen, CEO of 3D Realms, had to say about the whole thing.

After careful consideration, we’ve decided to rename our first-person-shooter “Ion Maiden” to “Ion Fury”. A lot of thought went into this, but most importantly it would be a disservice to our loyal fanbase and the fantastic developers, to drag out a long lawsuit. The amazing gameplay, interactivity and pure fun, is what makes Ion Fury a great game. Not the title.

We couldn’t be arsed to contact the Litigious Lady’s lawyers, or any other representatives for that matter, but here’s what they’d probably say if we did:

Gnarh, another victory for corporate law. The sacred IP has been protected, and the little ones have been stomped on judiciously. None shall have a chance at our incredibly generic name which we only managed to secure thanks to the utter idiocy that is trademark law. Now excuse me while I slather virginal viscera all over my pitiful, limp organ, so that I may once again regain its use for the briefest period.