Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 studio Sandfall Interactive has responded publicly to a post made by the creator of comic L’Académie Clair-Obscur last Friday, alleging Sandfall’s lawyers contacted him to demand he stop selling the book (via Polygon). Comic creator Olivier Gay—who says he pitched the book to publisher Drakoo in 2019, and has a contract with the title dated several months before Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s release—wrote on X that the letter implied his book was “riding on the game’s undeniable success” (via X’s translation feature).
Gay’s thread went on to say that he has “boundless admiration for Sandfall Interactive’s success story”, but conceded he’d be changing the name, not having “the energy nor the money to engage in a legal battle, especially against French studios that I greatly appreciate”.
Gay’s description of L’Académie Clair-Obscur as a story “about a peasant who joins an elite magic school” suggests a setting vastly different from Sandfall’s own. Despite this, some X users have taken to defending Sandfall’s sole ownership of the French translation of renaissance art terminology, and also the colour gold — pointing out that vaguely similar typography might confuse them into purchasing the book, presumably without checking its contents for even the brief second it would take to realise the two properties have nothing to do with each other.
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“Thank you for bringing the situation to our attention,” Sandfall wrote yesterday on X in response to Gay’s message. “We’re in contact with the publisher and Olivier to find a fair solution for everyone”. It’s a short acknowledgement, and one that comes across mostly like an attempt to ride out the controversy over something that’s already been decided with a bit of friendly face-saving in the hope it’ll die down sharpish.
Still, it’s worth pointing out that—overzealous lawyering or no—the need to defend its trademark leaves the developers at Sandfall in an uncomfortable position whereby their company now has to look like a big stompy corporate Goliath to Gay’s David. It’s a naff situation for everybody involved, basically —”an unfortunate coincidence”, as Gay puts it. Let’s hope the comic does well, whatever its new name ends up being. I’d go with “Super Mario’s official adventures in Disneyland”, but that’s just me.
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