Scrolls, a digital card game released in 2014 by Minecraft creator Markus Persson and Jakob Porsér, has undergone a branding change to Caller’s Bane and is going free-to-play.
The announcement was made on the official website today, which still refers to the game as Scrolls in various headers and images.
“We’ve got a new name – ‘Caller’s Bane,'” the website reads. “I’m sure there’s a good reason for it. Perhaps we just didn’t like the sound of ‘Scrolls’. Either way, it’s still the same game you’ve known and loved.”
The name Scrolls had been a point of contention, and eventually a lawsuit from Zenimax, owner of Bethesda. After Mojang trademarked the name Scrolls, Zenimax sued alleging that Mojang was infringing on their copyright for The Elder Scrolls. A Swedish court denied Zenimax’s injunction to stop Scrolls from progressing further and releasing and the two parties settled out of court, with Mojang giving up their trademark on the name.
The lack of a trademark likely made the name harder to use, thus the change to Caller’s Bane. With digital card games like Hearthstone making lots of money for Blizzard, Valve about to launch Artifact, and Bethesda relaunching The Elder Scrolls Legends, Mojang would have needed to change the name to really take advantage of a relaunch for itself.
In 2015, Microsoft announced that they would be sunsetting Scrolls and making the following update its last. The game has not really been talked about since. We have reached out to Microsoft to find out what their involvement is with Caller’s Bane but did not receive a response immediately.
Caller’s Bane can be downloaded now from the official website and has also opened up the ability for players to run their own custom servers for the game.
Our Take
The really quick and honestly kind of sloppy nature of the change makes me think this was not something long-planned that they used today to pull the trigger on it. The website still refers to Zenimax as the trademark holder and there’s no mention of Microsoft anywhere.
Source: Game Informer Digital Card Game Scrolls Renamed To Caller's Bane, Made Free-To-Play