You may recall a bit of news that was doing the rounds a wee while back involving UK heavy metal band Iron Maiden suing the pants off 3D Realms, the publishers of a decent enough Duke Nukem successor called Ion Maiden. Iron Maiden were after $2m from 3D Realms for trying to trade off the band’s “notoriety” by calling the game something that sounded quite a lot like Iron Maiden.
Ion Maiden. Iron Maiden. Nope, nothing alike. Don’t know what they were on about. Chalk and cheese!
At the time, 3D Realms referred to the lawsuit as “frivolous” and issued a curt statement on the future of the project, which has been in early access on Steam since the early months of 2018.
“We at 3D Realms, our co-publishers 1C Entertainment, and developer Voidpoint will review our options once we receive official notice of the lawsuit and will make any necessary decisions at the appropriate time,” the publisher said. “Regardless, everyone continues to work diligently on Ion Maiden to deliver the best possible experience later this year.”
Cut to: about six weeks later and here comes a renamed version of the game. Ion Maiden no longer, 3D Realms and developer Voidpoint have rebranded the retro first person shooter to Ion Fury, which is sure to help them evade lawsuits from aging metal bands for the forseeable future.
Here’s a new trailer featuring the game’s sparkling new title…
Ion Fury will leave eary access and be released on PC on 15th August. 3D Realms will likely find out if the old saying “all publicity is good publicity” holds any weight round about then, too.
Wireframe #17 is out now.
