Good news, Tarnished, it looks like FromSoftware is now the sole owner of the Elden Ring IP
And, has been for a little while now, if this recently spotted trademark update is anything to go by.
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When FromSoftware originally delivered the wonderful, twisted baby Elden Ring, it did so with some help from Bandai Namco, which served as a co-publisher and, at that point, was a co-holder of the game’s IP. However, it appears that FromSoft has now taken full ownership of the latter.
While we’ve all been concentrating on the whether or not the Shadow of the Erdtree expansion might arrive at some point soon or whether we’ll have to wait until further down the line, some people have been busy sleuthing over on the US Patent and Trademark Office’s website and the UK’s equivalent, the IPO. You know, as you do.
On the listings for Elden Ring, they’ve spotted an update showing that the ownership of this trademark was officially transferred over to FromSoftware as of April 2023. This is something that seemingly wasn’t acknowledged via a public announcement at the time - at least not via a nice tweet from FromSoft’s official Twitter account.
“Full Assignment RC000364507 received on date 12/04/2023 has been recorded, resulting to the change of ownership from Kabushiki Kaisha Bandai Namco Entertainment (also trading as Bandai Namco Entertainment Inc.), to Kabushiki Kaisha From Software,” reads the event being referred to on the IPO’s site, which was logged on April 24, 2023.
We were aware that Sony and Tencent increased investment in FromSoftware via its parent corporation Kadokawa back in August 2022, a move that was framed as potentially setting the Elden Ring developer up to be able to publish games down the line. It wasn’t clear at the time whether this would refer to FromSoft’s own games, or those of other, smaller studios.
We probably won’t get a concrete picture of what this means, assuming it is what it looks like, for a little while yet, but it certainly seems to be going down well with many FromSoft fans, who think it’ll give the developer the chance to have more control over its own creations.
If you’re currently replaying Elden Ring in anticipation of hopefully digging into some DLC at some point relatively soon, make sure to check out our array of guides to everything from beating the Draconic Tree Sentinel to how to get every ending you could want.