Bohemia slams OpFlash 2 marketing

By Tom Bramwell Published 2 March, 2009

"Is it really 'the official sequel'? No!"

Bohemia Interactive has instructed lawyers to protest directly to Codemasters about its "marketing tactics" for Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising.

In an extraordinary press release, the Czech-based developer of the original Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis slammed Codemasters for referring to its game as the "official sequel" when it says it owns the rights to the original game's content and Codemasters only owns the name.

"Is the upcoming Codemasters game really 'the much anticipated return of the genre-defining military conflict simulator' Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis? Is it really 'the official sequel to the multi-award winning Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis'? Bohemia Interactive says: 'No! What matters is the game, not the name,'" the developer insisted.

"The award-winning Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis was created by Bohemia Interactive in 1997-2001. Bohemia Interactive licensed its creation to Codemasters to publish and distribute. Although Codemasters owns the 'Operation Flashpoint' trademark and plans to release its new game under that title, Bohemia Interactive has always owned 100 per cent of the original OFP game," it said.

"Bohemia also provided [the] gaming community [with a] complete set of editing tools and ongoing support that turned the original OFP into one of the most modded PC games ever. Codemasters owns only the name - and Bohemia Interactive wants fans to understand that Codemasters' new game is not from the same development team that brought them the classic original."

The release goes on to quote Leora Herrmann of Kluger, Peretz, Kaplan & Berlin, Bohemia's lawyers. "In the license agreement, Bohemia Interactive expressly reserved the exclusive right to develop sequels to the original OFP game," Herrmann said (their emphasis). "Codemasters also acknowledged that Bohemia owns all the intellectual property in the game - except the words 'Operation Flashpoint'."

"Since Codemasters has no right to use the Bohemia Interactive game engine or any other component of the Bohemia-developed game, how can it rightfully claim to produce a 'sequel'?" Bohemia CEO Marek Spanel added in summary.

Meanwhile, in an interview with various friends-of-Eurogamer at Rock, Paper, Shotgun, Spanel indicated that our recent preview of Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising may have been the straw that broke the camel's back.

"One old Czech proverb says 'a lie repeated a hundred times becomes the truth' and there is some point in it that could be applied to the gaming industry and media these days. Maybe from Codemasters it was just a series of unfortunate misunderstandings, but something is seriously wrong when in a preview on a major gaming site, one of the developers of the new game, who was never even remotely involved in the development of the original, is credited as a 'veteran of the original Flashpoint team'," Spanel said.

That's how Clive Lindop, Dragon Rising's senior designer, was originally introduced to Eurogamer when we visited the studio to see the game in development. After Bohemia protested and we took it up with Codemasters, we were told Lindop was a prominent member of the original Flashpoint "community", and published a correction.

"If you add up all such little misunderstandings, like Codemasters reps saying what 'we did when we made the original Operation Flashpoint' etc. you may end up with seriously distracted image of the entire situation created in minds of journalists and gamers," Spanel remarked to RPS.

Codemasters has yet to comment on the situation.

To see what else Bohemia gets up to these days, check out our recent ArmA II hands-on preview.

Codemasters on Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising

  • April 2003: "a true sequel to the million-selling military simulator". But back then, Bohemia was still the developer.
  • April 2007: OpFlash 2 is reannounced as a Codies-developed game: "the biggest name in modern military simulation gaming will return", "Operation Flashpoint 2 will mark the long-awaited return of the total conflict simulator, which won international acclaim" and "Building on the original game's heritage".
  • August 2007 (Leipzig Games Convention): "the return of the leading name in modern military simulation gaming".
  • July 2008 (E3): "the return of the genre-defining military series", "the much anticipated return of the genre-defining military conflict simulator".
  • September 2008: "the much anticipated sequel to the genre-defining military conflict simulator game released in 2001" (in an Image Metrics press release with quotes - and therefore, one can safely assume, approval from Codies).
  • February 2009: "the much-anticipated military shooter that marks the return of the genre-defining conflict series".
Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (16) Latest comment 3 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • DFawkes #1 3 years ago

    I wondered why Arma felt like the sequel to OF, I just never looked into it. So they've got a Championship Manager situation going on? That seemed to go well, most of the people who played it understood Football Manager was the real new game and went for that instead - I'm sure all the real OF fans will realise.

  • AaronTurner #2 3 years ago

    Too bad Arma was shit.

  • Eraysor #3 3 years ago

    I can understand why they're a little angry, but it's still somewhat petty of them to attack Codemasters. Some publishers are going to be a little wary of signing them in the future.

  • citizenHUNTER #4 3 years ago

    Good on the developers, it does seem like a bit of false advertising from Codemasters to be fair. It's essentially like if you made your own version of a cola soft drink and just called it Coca Cola, you're using your own ingredients but effectively knicking an established name to help sell it. To me it feels pretty wrong, even if they own the name, to be claiming it's the official sequel when every aspect of the game is not from any of the same group who made the first... Codies should just not have mentioned being an official sequel and no problems, they own the name and that's that.

  • citizenHUNTER #5 3 years ago

    Codemasters were once nice good guys who made awesome games like Micro Machines (still campaigning for XBLA release of the 16 bit era games!), but in recent years clearly the big money men have been more involved, hence turds like Grid etcetera :p (Sorry, proper sim fan here and their recent racing games have been dire for a sim fan even though everyone else thinks they are amazing.)

  • UncleLou #6 3 years ago

    I can understand why they're a little angry, but it's still somewhat petty of them to attack Codemasters.

    After the article here on EG, in which one guy of CM claimed to have been of the original team, which allegedly isn't true, I can understand they're pissed off.

  • Fatbobbybob #7 3 years ago

    I can understand Bohemia being pissed but surely they should let ARMA I & II do the talking. I haven't played either but I know they didn't live up to OPF1. On the flip side Codemasters have a big name to live up to and by mentioning all these similarites surely they're putting more pressure on themselves.

  • sneetch #8 3 years ago

    @citizenHUNTER
    Good on the developers, it does seem like a bit of false advertising from Codemasters to be fair. It's essentially like if you made your own version of a cola soft drink and just called it Coca Cola, you're using your own ingredients but effectively knicking an established name to help sell it. To me it feels pretty wrong, even if they own the name, to be claiming it's the official sequel when every aspect of the game is not from any of the same group who made the first... Codies should just not have mentioned being an official sequel and no problems, they own the name and that's that.

    It all hinges on the definition of an "official sequel". I dare say Codemasters (and their lawyers) feel they have the right to produce the official sequel to Op Flashpoint as they're the ones who own the brand name and so are the ones who define what's official or not when it comes to that brand name. Bohemia cannot produce an official sequel to the game as they sold the rights to the name; they can produce similar games but they're unofficial sequels to Op Flashpoint. This is the way things go, for them to get so irritated about this is a bit much. They sold the brand, they really don't have any say in what Codemasters does with it and should move on.

    To use your analogy it's like if you bought and owned the Coca-Cola brand name and brought out your own version calling it the official sequel to Coke and then the original manufacturers (who sold you the name, btw) were getting snippy and claiming that they're the only people who can bring out a new Coke.

    I liked Op Flash (despite its problems) and I'm looking forward to Op Flash 2. I'll be brutally honest and say that I don't give a shit about whether or not Bohemia is developing it or who did or didn't work on the original game: Op Flash 2, the official sequel (until proven otherwise), looks awesome and if they can improve on the "simulator" feel of the original then I'll be picking it up.
    Edited by 4 at 02/03/09 @ 11:50

  • metalangel #9 3 years ago

    Codebastards arrogance strikes again. It's one thing for a publisher to take credit for a current project, but to lie about the extent of your involvement in a previous project which you are now all but trying to take the credit for...

  • FromTheLandUnknown #10 3 years ago

    We saw similar situation with the Far Cry "sequel", and despite the mutants in the first one, it was also much better game, than the second.
    Maybe we will now see at last, that despite another development team, there will be a really good game. One can always hope...
    I liked OPF immensely, and would like, that at least one of the two, Codemasters or Bohemia Interactive, makes something, which will be at least nearly so good, as OPF was.
    On the subject, though, I really dislike this art of name exploiting, even when i think, that original sin lies at both of them. They together made the contract. But on the other hand, I'm totally aware, that at the time there was big Codemasters dictating the terms, and not so big Bohemia Interactive, with a excellent game, which they wanted to publish. Now, when they are more known, they (Bohemia Interactive) are maybe expressing their discontent anew, but it is too late.
    And maybe ArmA wasn't as good as OPF, because it was not backed with enough money of some bigger publisher. It seems, that with this conflict nobody is winning, for now, and that there can be two mediocre or bad games because of it.
    At least Crytek is continuing to make good games...

  • sneetch #11 3 years ago

    @UncleLou
    I can understand why they're a little angry, but it's still somewhat petty of them to attack Codemasters.

    After the article here on EG, in which one guy of CM claimed to have been of the original team, which allegedly isn't true, I can understand they're pissed off.

    You need a few more "allegedly"s in there, I think. ;)

    Did he actually claim to be a part of the original team? We don't know the precise details of what was said there and how, it may have been a blatant and deliberate attempt to mislead (which I very much doubt), it may all have been a miscommunication between Codemasters and EG or it may have been a simple misunderstanding on EGs part. If I had to bet I'd go for miscommunication.

    [link url=http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/operati on-flashpoint-2-preview?page=3
    ]http://ww w.eurogamer.net/articles/operat...[/link]

    Clarification (23/02/09): In response to feedback, we have clarified Clive Lindop's position and confirmed he was not part of the original Operation Flashpoint development team. We've updated the article and regret the error.
    Edited by 1 at 02/03/09 @ 12:19

  • hiddenranbir #12 3 years ago

    I do feel sorry them but maybe developers shouldn't let publishers own the names of their games.

  • Turrican #13 3 years ago

    Bohemia should worry about their own game and stop knicker twisting over the codemaster's language snafoos. If ArmA2 out Metacritic's OpFlash 2 then gamers won't care where the game comes from.

    ArmA was the most unprofessional unoptimised game I've ever played so I should instruct my laywers to extract the price I paid from them!

    Increased publicity helps both titles I suppose, if they want to play games in the press they can go right ahead.

  • dirk_aircool #14 3 years ago

    Its ok . I just picked up Boheimia's teddy bear up from the corner .

  • Transcendent #15 3 years ago

    Codemasters own the name so they should be able to name it Operation Flashpoint 2 if they want. But calling it a sequel to a game they don't own and didn't make? Isn't that the same as if I made a movie and called it an official part of the Star Wars franchise, just without the name "Star Wars" in it?

  • sneetch #16 3 years ago

    @Transcendent
    Codemasters own the name so they should be able to name it Operation Flashpoint 2 if they want. But calling it a sequel to a game they don't own and didn't make? Isn't that the same as if I made a movie and called it an official part of the Star Wars franchise, just without the name "Star Wars" in it?

    Again, as they own the rights to the name it's the same as if you made a movie and called it an official part of the Star Wars franchise, with the name "Star Wars" because you own that name.