Gal Guardians: Demon Purge is the new name for Grim Guardians
Following a complaint from a trademark holder, Inti Creates has had to change the name of its excellent Gothic platformer and Gal*Gun spinoff Grim Guardians: Demon Purge to Gal Guardians: Demon Purge.
The complaint came from the holder of the trademark “GRIMGUARD”, which Inti didn’t name in its press release, but odds are pretty good that it’s Outerdawn Limited, makers of a distinctly unremarkable-looking free-to-play mobile game called Grimguard Tactics. This appears to be the only publicly listed trademark with such a name.
And if the makers of yet another free-to-play mobile game hoping to cash in on gullible whales cause problems for folks making actually good-quality commercial games, you better believe we have no problem pointing fingers.
The hilarious thing is that if you search for “GRIMGUARD” on Google right now, pretty much every search result is about Inti’s game. Which is good, because you should all be playing that rather than wasting your time with copycat mobile garbage that charges up to £99.99 at a time for its in-app shite.
Gal Guardians: Demon Purge, if you’re unfamiliar, is a spinoff of Inti Creates’ Gal*Gun series starring Shinobu and Maya Kamizono, main heroines of Gal*Gun Double Peace. Rather than being a rail shooter-cum-dating sim, however, Gal Guardians: Demon Purge is a side-scrolling platformer presented in the style of 32-bit Castlevania titles such as Symphony of the Night.
Interestingly, Gal Guardians: Demon Purge eschews the popular open-structure “Metroidvania” style in favour of a more stage-based structure. There’s still plenty of exploration to do, but instead it unfolds within the game’s self-contained stages. As you progress through the game as a whole, you’ll unlock various abilities that allow you to access new areas.
It’s a truly brilliant game, and one of Inti Creates’ best to date — check out our review and guide for more — so it’s a shame to see it struck with such an unnecessary amount of hassle. Inti Creates are some of the most honest, passionate creators in the business, and the folks over there don’t deserve to have to deal with this nonsense, particularly with a title that is clearly a passion project for everyone involved.
While Gal*Gun is far from Inti’s most “mainstream” franchise, it is one that creators and fans alike have come to love and cherish over the years — particularly since it came west for the first time. What’s notable about Gal Guardians: Demon Purge is that it was a clear effort to bring people from a broader audience into the series as a whole by introducing them to its loveable cast of characters — and it’s been working. Even those who haven’t historically been a fan of Gal*Gun’s mildly ecchi funtimes have been enjoying Gal Guardians: Demon Purge.
The trademark dispute over Gal Guardians: Demon Purge only applies to certain territories: specifically, the US, EU, UK, Australia and New Zealand, the latter of which appears to be where Outerdawn’s trademark was filed. This means that physical copies acquired from outside those regions — such as the multi-language Asian version available on Play-Asia — will still carry the old name.
It will doubtless cause issues for western console publisher PQube, however, who are publishing English physical releases of Gal Guardians: Demon Purge later this summer. We don’t know how far through the manufacturing process those were, but if they were already in production then they will have to be scrapped completely and remade with the new name. What a massive waste of time, money and resources — all over a trademark that you almost certainly had never heard of prior to this incident.
If this indeed was the doing of Outerdawn Limited, one can only presume that the intention was something along the lines of “any publicity is good publicity”. Well, that kind of backfired, didn’t it?
Grim Guardians: Demon Purge is available now for Windows PC via Steam, Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4. You may be unable to purchase the game on some services until the name change goes through.
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