Hellhunter Renamed to HellSign Due To Trademark Issues

<p>Ballistic Interactive is a two-person independent development studio based in Australia&period; The duo teamed up in 2015 and collaborated on several prototypes until they arrived at a concept they felt they could run with&period; Their first game is described as an &&num;8220&semi;investigative action RPG that pits you against the horrors of the afterlife&&num;8221&semi;&period; It was originally unearthed in 2016 as <em>Hellhunter<&sol;em>&comma; though it has been renamed to <em>HellSign<&sol;em> due to a trademark conflict with Rebellion Entertainment&comma; the team behind <em>Sniper Elite<&sol;em> and <em>Alien vs Predator<&sol;em>&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&nbsp&semi;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<figure id&equals;"attachment&lowbar;136331" aria-describedby&equals;"caption-attachment-136331" style&equals;"width&colon; 1000px" class&equals;"wp-caption aligncenter"><img class&equals;"size-large wp-image-136331" src&equals;"https&colon;&sol;&sol;cdn&period;bagogames&period;com&sol;wp-content&sol;uploads&sol;2018&sol;03&sol;02101559&sol;hellsign-1-1024x576&period;jpg" alt&equals;"" width&equals;"1000" height&equals;"563" &sol;><figcaption id&equals;"caption-attachment-136331" class&equals;"wp-caption-text">HellSign&comma; Ballistic Interactive<&sol;figcaption><&sol;figure>&NewLine;<p>Ballistic Entertainment recently discovered that Rebellion trademarked the phrase &&num;8220&semi;hell hunter&&num;8221&semi; in January 2017&period; Pete Skyking of Ballistic Interactive shared info on why it has taken so long for the team to discover this trademark&&num;8217&semi;s existence&period; &&num;8220&semi;<em>We looked into trademarks early in development&period; But as we were on a small indie budget&comma; and found that many successful indie games didn&&num;8217&semi;t have a trademark on launch&comma; we decided to take the risk and instead put the money toward making a better game&period; Unfortunately&comma; when we finally did decide to trademark&comma; we found that &&num;8216&semi;hell hunter&&num;8217&semi; had been trademarked by Rebellion&period; We took legal advice and were told this would be a problem<&sol;em>&&num;8220&semi;&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Despite this minor conflict&comma; Skyking had no animosity toward Rebellion&period; In fact&comma; he even praised the studio after reaching out to their CEO&comma; Jason Kingly&period; Skyking said&comma; &&num;8220&semi;<em>Given the sticky situation&comma; Jason was awesome&period; He not only personally replied to us&comma; but handled it like a boss&excl; He was open to working something out and helping us through the situation &&num;8211&semi; but unfortunately&comma; at the end of the day&comma; as indies operating out of our savings our only two options were to change our name&comma; or cut content&period; Needless to say&comma; we had to change the name<&sol;em>&&num;8220&semi;&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>With that situation settled&comma; Ballistic is determined to finish and release HellSign on Steam this year&period; Skyking took a moment to thank the community by saying &&num;8220&semi;<em>Most of all&comma; we want to thank our community for the constant support and kind words&period; You are the reason we are still moving forward towards making the best game we can &&num;8211&semi; and we can&&num;8217&semi;t wait for you to enjoy it&excl;<&sol;em>&&num;8220&semi;<&sol;p>&NewLine;