Rockstar/EA Tit for Tat in GTA/Simpsons Feud

Last week we discussed how GTA parody elements were pulled from The Simpsons Game after some of Rockstar's lawyers got into the act. Apparently, the folks at EA who made the game are a bit peeved about the aggressive lawyering on Rockstar's part and the wussy lawyering on EA's: "The game begins with Bart wanting to play a game called Grand Theft Scratchy. Of course this is a parody of Grand Theft Auto. And Marge immediately takes it away from him. She tries to clean up the town and stop the game from being distributed in Springfield because Marge is against video game violence. She uses horrific violence to stop video game violence... in a video game... That's called irony. The people who make Grand Theft Auto - they spazzed out like little babies."

Comments

Re:It's their trademark

[Goobermunch]

Except that there's no trademark infringement here because they're not actually using the trademark. Also, it's entirely permissible for a markholder to license another person to use their trademark.

--AC

They removed nothing.

[Vampyre_Dark]

They just renamed that section to mob wars. Otherwise it looks just like San Andreas. Marge suns around a place that looks just like the grove you start out at in GTA:SA, where CJ's house is.

You can see it right here.
http://www.ea.com/simpsons/mob/

Re:Reality.....

[putch]

well, for one. the original GTA was essentially a poor 2-d imitation of quarantine: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarantine_(game)