Tim Langdell and Edge Games

Compiled by Derek Yu. Last edited on August 26th, 2009.

Tim Langdell

This is a compilation of information about Tim Langdell, the owner of Edge Games, who I believe has abused the law and employed underhanded business tactics for 30 years for his own personal gain and at the expense of honest and hard-working developers. At all times I have tried to provide links to source material and have tried to make it clear when information is alleged. In the cases where I have not, it should be assumed that the information is opinion or hearsay, unless otherwise proven to be factual.

It should be noted that, in my opinion, there is a very broad range of information that speaks negatively about Tim and Edge Games that spans many different people over a long period of time, and very little information that suggests otherwise. It should also be noted that before writing my first article for TIGSource I had never heard of Tim. My interest is in helping protect creators and in promoting creative innovation.

A big thanks to everyone who has provided the information that is compiled here. Especially the members of TIGForums who posted in this thread, ChaosEdge, who brought attention to the Edge comics and Garfield: Winter’s Tail, and Simon Carless, who penned the original article questioning the practices Edge Games.

Articles about Tim Langdell and Edge Games:

- “Class Acts: Or Not. The IGDA, Langdell, Capps and “Policing” the Board.” by Stephen Jacobs, Gamasutra, June 1, 2009 (link)

- “Tim Langdell and Edge: Part Two” by Derek Yu, TIGSource, June 8, 2009 (link)

- “A Brief Statement On The Mobigame/Edge Games Article” by Simon Carless, Gamasutra, June 10, 2009 (link)

- “The Edge of Reason?” by Simon Parkin, Eurogamer, August 3, 2009 (link)

Documented court cases:

More can be found here.

- New World Computing v. Edge Interactive Media, March 22, 1993 (Planet’s Edge)

- Marvel Entertainment v. Edge Games, November 11, 1996 (Cutting Edge)
- Marvel Entertainment v. Edge Games, November 22, 1996 (Double Edge)
- Marvel Entertainment v. Edge Games, November 22, 1996 (Over the Edge)

- Zye Technology Limited v. Edge Games, October 21, 1999 (Digital Edge)

Note the result: “Costs: no award, in view of extensive but unsupported pleadings.” Also, please see the pdf of the final decision, in which the judge opines:

The opponent’s have made a number of claims regarding their use of their registered marks EDGE and THE EDGE, and also marks such as DIGITAL EDGE and CUTTING EDGE. However, the evidence filed only shows one invoice totally £3,376 in 1991. The sale was for “Digital Edge Mouse (Amiga)” and was made to Commodore UK, a company known as a supplier of computer hardware. In an industry as large as the computer sector this must be regarded as de minimis. Also, it is not clear whether the goods were sold under the mark DIGITAL EDGE or AMIGA. All the other “evidence of use” either is not dated or appears to be for the market in North America. The opponent’s cannot be said to have had any significant goodwill or reputation in the UK at the relevant date, 13 January 1996, which I note is some five years after the date of the invoice mentioned above.

- Namco v. Edge Interactive, August 14, 2002 (Soul Edge)

- Sony Entertainment v. Edge Games, October 23, 2008 (Playstation Edge)

- John Coates v. Edge Games, October 9, 2008 (EdgeGamers)

Letter from Solange Kia Representing EdgeGamers
A cease and desist letter sent to James Robert Wood, aka “Jarhead,” of the EXtreme Gamers Organization, by Solange Kea on behalf of EdgeGamers. This was scanned and sent to TIGSource by Mr. Wood himself. (It should be noted that the Law Offices of Solange Kea lists a John Coates as one of its attorneys [California State Bar Number 207175]. This might be the same John Coates from the above case.)


- Velocity Micro v. Edge Interactive, November 7, 2008 (Edge Gaming Computers)
- Velocity Micro v. Edge Interactive, November 7, 2008 (Edge Gaming Computers)

Edge Games Cease and Desist to Velocity Micro
A cease and desist letter sent by Edge Games to Velocity Micro (source).


- Cybernet Systems v. Edge Games, March 13, 2009 (Edge of Extinction)

Note that as Exhibit E-3 Edge Games has submitted something that looks like the cover of Edge Magazine, as a sample “of the EDGE brand as used in connection with computer hardware in various formats” (see “Answer to Complaint…” 5-01.pdf). However, this is not actually the cover of Edge Magazine from July 2004 (which was never sold in the United States). A side-by-side comparison of the two:

Edge Magazine Comparison

Edge Magazine, published by Future Publishing, is depicted on the left. Exhibit E-3 looks like it could have been doctored by Langdell to show a tenuous connection between Edge Magazine and Edge Gaming PCs (see “Velocity Micro v. Edge Interactive” further above).

Also note that as Exhibit B, Edge Games has submitted a something that looks like the cover of the Malibu Comics book “Edge”. However, it’s different from the published version in three significant ways:

Edge

1. Exhibit B has a “THE” in the title, but the published version does not.

2. Exhibit B has a “TM” next to the title, but the published version does not.

3. Exhibit B has a disclaimer at the bottom, which says “The Edge is the trademark of Edge Interactive Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved.”

On top of that, the assertion made on the Edge Games website, under “Comics,” that “EDGE is working with Steven Grant to publish the fourth edition of the original series” has been denied by Mr. Grant himself (link):

Got an email yesterday informing me the website for some game company called Edge Games has a page mentioning me by name stating I’m working with them to release the long awaited final issue of the EDGE mini-series Gil Kane and I did at Malibu/Bravura in the ‘90s. Only two problems with that story: they’ve never been in touch with me (at least not personally; for all I know, they’ve talked with my lawyer), and the fourth issue was published a few years ago with the rest of the mini in THE LAST HEROES, from Byron Preiss Productions. But at least my legend grows, right?

That’s not all. Look at Exhibit F:

Garfield: Winter's Tail

The document submitted by Edge Games has “GAMER’S EDGE” displayed on the corner.

Trademark filings by Edge Games:

Search US trademarks here and UK trademarks here.

- Edgy (filed in US on May 16, 2009)

- Mirror’s Spore (filed in UK on May 19, 2009)

- Soulspore (filed in UK on May 19, 2009)

- Edge of Twilight (filed in UK on June 1, 2009)

The dispute between Edge Games and Mobigame:

Although I believe Tim Langdell/Edge Games has been antagonizing developers since the 80’s, it’s his dispute with Mobigame, the creator of the iPhone game Edge, which has brought his actions to the attention of today’s game community. It was the mobile game blog FingerGaming which first publicized the dispute (link).

Accoring to Mobigame’s David Papazian, Papazian offered to change the name of the game to “Edgy”, and Langdell refused, whereupon he registered the trademark for “Edgy” (link).

According to Papazian, one of Langdell’s claims (link) is that Edge is too similar to Bobby Bearing, a game which Edge Games published in 1986 for the ZX Spectrum. However, it should be noted that Bobby Bearing is likely directly inspired by two popular games of that time, Marble Madness, which was released by Atari in 1984, and Spindizzy, which was released earlier in 1986. Here are the similarities:

- Both Bobby Bearing and Marble Madness star marbles and use the same type of axonometric projection.

- Both Bobby Bearing and Spindizzy use the same type of axonometric projection and also feature separate rooms and the goal in both is to collect items in each room. The 30th issue of Crash magazine refers to Bobby Bearing’s rooms as “spindizzyesque” (link).

Whereas in Edge the game stars a cube, features large scrolling levels, and uses a slightly different style of axonometric projection than Bobby Bearing, Marble Madness, and Spindizzy (link). Furthermore, many reviews of Bobby Bearing in various game magazines from the 80’s refer directly to both Marble Madness and Spindizzy (another example). I have seen no articles about Edge, however, that make reference to Bobby Bearing (except in relation to Langdell’s accusations).

Update: Eurogamer has provided further insight into the dispute, including excerpts from emails sent to Mobigame by Langdell:

One: change the name of your game to something that does not contain the word EDGE in it within the next 7 calendar days. Two: License the right to use the trademark ‘EDGE’ from us.

If you decide to take option 1, then we would need payment for your use of the trademark to the day you change the name. We propose 25 per cent of the revenues you have received from the game to the day you stop using our mark. If you decide to take option 2, then [you would need to add] a subtitle such as “EDGE: An Homage to Bobby Bearing” and to add our company name (EDGE Games Inc) immediately below yours in the opening screen.

(link)

Update: On August 10th, Edge Games issued a public statement regarding the Edge Games/Mobigame debacle, and has been updating it periodically since. Note that in many of the emails the sender of the email is not displayed. However, the source code of the site originally revealed the sender as being “tim@edgegames.com” (the source has since been changed).

Contradictory and/or nonsensical statements made by Edge Games/Tim Langdell:

- Edge Games claimed in a cease-and-desist letter to Mobigame that (link):

Our company, EDGE, is the oldest videogame company (established 1979) and is widely known not only for its games, but also for our licensed products and those of our partners, such as EDGE Magazine, EDGE game PCs, EDGE controllers, and so forth.

Even though there’s only one way to construe the statement, he adds a footnote underneath that reads “We did not mean to imply Future Publishing, publishers of Edge Magazine, are our “partners” – for the record, they are not.”

Also, it should be noted that Edge Games is not the oldest video game company. Nintendo was founded in 1889 and released its first console video game, Light Tennis, in 1977 (link). Atari was founded in 1972 and released an arcade version of Pong that same year.

- Tim’s claim that he has “produced all of the several hundred game SKUs EDGE has developed and published since 1979” (link) doesn’t stack up with the list of games on his website, which, when broken down (by Rob Fearon), realistically amounts to far fewer games (most of which were released in the 80’s).

- In its “PUBLIC STATEMENT REGARDING MOBIGAME AND ITS iTUNES GAME,” to Mobigame, Edge Games claims that “like any owner of registered trademark rights, Edge Games is obliged to protect and enforce those rights or Edge runs the very real risk of losing its trademark registration.” He also claims that there was a lot of confusion over whether his company produced Mobigame’s Edge, saying “we have been flooded with communications from people who think your game is made by us” (link). However, in this author’s opinion there are a few reasons to be skeptical of this claim:

1. No evidence of any “communications” are given. Not even one drop of “the flood” as of August 19th, 2009.

2. If there were a flood, it would have arrived at the height of the iPhone app’s popularity, when it launched on the App Store on January, 2009 (it was announced on Fingergaming even earlier, in December). Given Tim’s litigious nature, it seems unreasonable that he would have waited two months to send a cease-and-desist letter after even receiving a single letter about the app.

3. There are plenty of games with “Edge” in the title that Tim and Edge Games have (apparently) not gone after (link). This is inconsistent with the idea that he has an obligation to go after any gaming or computer-related product that has “Edge” in the title.

Suspicious internet activity that may be associated with Tim Langdell:

- There is some evidence that points to Tim or someone closely-related to Tim (possibly Tim’s wife Cheri Langdell) creating and editing his Wikipedia entry (now deleted) as well as the entry for Edge Games. The user’s name was cheridavis. Simon Carless first pointed this out in his article about Tim, archived here. The Wikipedia entry for “Tim Langdell” that was created by cheridavis is archived here.

- Users calling themselves either “Joe,” “mopius,” or “Bob” have posted inflammatory comments defending Tim in a number of blogs and forums. Based on the style of writing, the content of the comments, and the suspicion over who created Tim’s Wikipedia entry, it’s been suggested that this is actually a single user who may be Tim or someone closely-related to Tim. See the comments of TIGSource article or this comment for an example.

- Here is a screengrab of the Edge Games website, taken on July 15th, 2009, which shows what is possibly a deliberate attempt by Edge Games to create confusion between “Mirrors” by Edge Games and “Mirror’s Edge” by Electronic Arts:

Mirrors

- Here is a screengrab taken from the Edge Games website on August 7th, 2009:

Edge Games - Teenage Wasteland

Carlton Holder (IMDB), or someone writing as Carlton Holder, a movie producer who claims to hold the copyright to Teenage Wasteland, has posted in comments (link) and on Twitter (link, cached) saying that he has no such agreement with Tim Langdell.

- This is an archived version of a very odd Flash file that was found on the—edge.com, which is owned by Langdell. It’s a teaser for “Edge Galactic Spacelines,” with a quote from Buzz Aldrin on it.

The legitimacy of Edge Games as a company:

- Although Tim has made attempts since the Mobigame story became spread to distance himself from his company (by either whiting out his name from e-mails he sent (link), or having anonymous affiliates comment on his behalf (e.g. “If by ‘Tim’ you mean our CEO, then he is not responding to posts in this forum.” link), there is no evidence that anyone but Tim is employed full time at Edge Games, or that the anonymous affiliates are not Tim himself. Since the story first broke, there have not been, as far as this author can tell, any attempts made by an employee of Edge Games other than Tim Langdell to speak out on his behalf and not remain anonymous.

- Edge Games’ upcoming game Racers was once sold under the name Voltage, and was originally developed by Lexicon Entertainment (link). This fact is, as of August 17th, 2009, not mentioned anywhere on the Edge Games front page (where Racers is promoted as one of Edge Games’ “HOT NEW GAMES” with “NEW SCREENSHOTS!”) or on its Racers page:

Edge Games - Racers


The above screenshots can also be found in this May 2008 article from CVG. It’s unknown as to how Tim acquired Racers from Lexicon Entertainment.

- On the “About” section of the Edge Games website (link) and under a WHOIS for edgegames.com (link) the address for Edge Games is listed as:

530 South Lake Avenue
Suite 171
Pasadena, CA 91101

However, this is the address of Mail Box Planet, a mailing/shipping company (link). A photo of the company’s storefront was uploaded by Brian Beuken:

Mail Box Planet

Allegations of abusive business practices from people who claim to have worked with Tim Langdell:

A response from demo scene group Ian&Mic to the question “What made you stop the scene activity?” in an interview with In Media Res, date unknown (probably mid-to-late 90’s) (link):

We stopped programming after the disastrous court case with the edge, a software house in london directed by tim “slimy” landell. We converted Solder of Light to C64 from the arcade which was completed in 6 months but according to Tim Landell should have been completed in three months (yeaa right) so they refused to pay us. So we decided to take the Edge to court but Tim Landell left the country for America. With no money we were forced to sell all our equipment to settle outstanding loans from the bank. So we both went esparto ways and concentrated on normal carers.

A quote from Ian&Mic in an interview with c64.com (link):

Around this time, we also had a long court battle with a games publisher called The Edge (owned by Tim Langdell) who’s only ambition in life was to rip off as many programmers, musicians and graphic artists in every way he could. He used every delay tactic known to man to resist payment, so we decided justice will prevail using legal aid and try to reclaim our earnings through the courts. We eventually won the court case with his company but we did not receive the money that was owed to us or the Maniacs of Noise for the music as he cowardly left for America. But we got some comfort that he ceased trading in the UK through our efforts, with their reputation in tatters. In those last months we would spend days and nights without sleep for weeks on end writing routines and games that had tight deadlines. There was no fun in games development anymore so it was the right time for us to move on.

An email from Bo Jangeborg (translated from Swedish), the creator of Fairlight, to raiten, written around June 4, 2009 (link):

I had to get a lawyer to get them [Tim and Cheri] to pay me the money they owed me for Fairlight. They refused to pay me, unless I signed up to make more games for them. As a result, Fairlight II was released without my approval, with several known bugs. In the end, I ended up getting some money but they ended up with the rights to Fairlight [My note: that Langdell is now releasing for the WiiWare, according to his website]. I didn’t sign up for any more games….. ;o)
Generally speaking you could definitely say I’m not very fond of the Langdell’s or their way of doing business. I can only state that they have spent a lot of time in court.

Posted on July 10th, 2009 by YardanIcarius in the comments of a Kotaku article titled “Trademark Troll Gets Mobigames’ EDGE Taken Down” (link):

I would like to make comment regarding Tim Langdell, who I worked for and created around 6 games for Softek International AKA The Edge back in my earlier years. This is not really news to me or most of the staff working for The Edge/Softek/ACE/RAD/Mico Selection at the time, it was a regular thing that he in fact took people to court, did not pay wages and generally ripped everyone off including his distributors. On one occasion he came into the office all gleaming like turns out he did not pay Rodney Matthews who at the time redesigned our Edge logo which Tim boasted and took pride in this. There was even an incident at a computer show when we were ordered to march over to a computer magazine stall and remove all the magazines because they wrote some comment Tim did not like and he was removed from the stall be security. The list is endless, there was a law suit over the rights to the A-Team of which the game had already been started I think Ocean Software was the other party, other games included X-men which I worked on an early version for the Atari-ST I think there was a huge row with Marvel and they ultimately ended the contract and working relationship with him of which childish tantrums were displayed in the office. Everyone at the time in the UK games industry knew of how he did business which ultimately lead to the demise of The Edge, ACE and all the other labels he created as nobody with experience would work for him. As far as the amount of games, Softek International only published around 20-30 games from all its labels including the re-releasing over and over again on new labels like Micro Selection etc.. It’s a real shame as the people who worked there were great and went on to create great games for decent publishers and get paid. I for one still keep in touch with them and this is a really interesting thing to happen as this has been going on for decades.

Posted on July 11th, 2009 by QadiraBelus in the comments of a Kotaku article titled “Trademark Troll Is At It Again” (link):

The reason why he managed continued to do this in those days games on average took a couple of weeks to do. I recall we did a conversion of a game in about 6 weeks for the ST. Now what I am saying is that he did try it on once with me but I would not stand for his BS as I had heard it all before a few examples – He would insist changes not agreed to in the original agreement so the developer would have to work another month without payment , most times he would drag this on until the very last moment an example was for the development on Inside Outing (Raffles) on the Atari-ST. The artist who I knew was asked to create assets for the game in or around a month, this dragged on until the very last moment then the artist was dropped and the in-house team would finish the little tidy up work meaning the original artist only got paid a small advance. So this is how he worked with a lot of people including the coders. When I was there we had about 3 coders, 2-3 artists including myself. A few people worked from home but again went through this same process. Whenever he was confronted about these verbal changes, he totally denied wanting that work done so why should he pay for it as it took longer to make the game then the original work contract specified this was a far too common practice he tried with everyone and got away with it for so long untill he could not get good people to make those games anymore. A few of the coders left to work with the Bitmap Bros. some of them set up other game studios which I went to work with along with the other artists. The wreck that was left was a few terrible conversions of the last generation of Edge games, nothing came of the Marvel deal apart from the Punisher it was only released on 16-bit. The X-Men game was dead anyway, Fairlight on the Atari ST never saw the light of day and was canned in favour of the Taito games. It has been a shock to see this all dragged up after all this time but I am sure he will get what he deserves and I know there are a lot of people back here in the UK that will be happy when this twat is not invloved in the games industry anymore. I have been in contact with a few ex-The Edge/Softek developers and they should be able to shed some more light on him if thats the right word to use.

Posted on July 28th, 2009 by Agent_X in the comments of a Develop article titled “The Chaos Engine rallies against Tim Langdell” (link):

Whilst the Edge/Softek international was a publisher I don’t think they owned the rights to many of the games Tim Langdell is claiming, it has been mentioned that ‘Edge’ do not own the rights to Bobby Bearing and I bleave this may be the case with many of the titles.

The reason the back catalogue has many titles, these were part of a budget range called ‘The Micro Selection’ again I think these were licensed and he is claiming them as ‘Edge’ owned IP. The only way we will know is if the developers of these titles are still around as the original publishers such as Anco are long gone.

The Edge also claim it used to be a distributor of ‘Sega’ hardware, the only distribution deal I know of was the one Sega had with Ariolasoft, they were in Covent Garden in fact around the corner from the offices in Southampton Street could this be another exaggerated fact concocted by Tim Langdell?

I am also lead to believe when ‘EDGE’ moved to the states, developers were not the only people that lost out on what he owed them…

Other Legal Activity involving Tim Langdell:

- On August 15, 2006, actress Alexandra “Alexa” Jago filed a restraining order against Tim in the county of Los Angeles. It’s possible that Tim lost his position on BAFTA/LA’s Board of Directors as a result of this. (link)

- Brian Beuken, a game programmer who is an outspoken critic of Tim and also a member of the IGDA forums, announced on August 26, 2009 that the university where he works received the following email:

Dear Sir or Madam,

A member of your faculty, Brian Beukin, has been using Internet forums and blogs to cyberstalk and cyber-harass and otherwise spread false statement and rumor about persons in order to cause them stress, harass them, defame them and hurt them. We are in process of filing a court action to compel Mr Beukin to cease his defamatory and libelous activity, and are also exploring the possibility of criminal prosecution of him under appropriate international law.

Can you please confirm that Mr Beukin works for you and that he will generally be available on your campus to accept service of court papers and potentially receive notice of criminial charges?

Thank you for your swift response,

Sincerely,

Dr. Tim Langdell CEO, Edge Games Inc California, USA

Member, Board of Directors, IGDA

Note that Tim makes it clear to the university that he is on the Board of Directors for the IGDA. Also note the various misspellings in the email, including that of Brian’s last name. Also note that Tim accuses Brian of cyber-stalking when Tim is currently under a restraining order.