Minecraft creator challenges Bethesda to winner-take-all Quake deathmatch

This reminds me of a story about Herb Kelleher, one of the founders of Southwest Airlines.<p><pre><code> One outrageous incident was his arm-wrestling showdown with the CEO of Stevens Aviation in 1992. Both Stevens and Southwest were using the advertising tagline "Plane Smart." To settle the matter, Kelleher suggested an arm-wrestling competition with the winner keeping the rights to the slogan. Kelleher lost the match, but the event generated so much good will and publicity that Stevens let Southwest continue use of the tagline. </code></pre> <a href="http://www.pbs.org/kcet/chasingthesun/innovators/hkelleher.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.pbs.org/kcet/chasingthesun/innovators/hkelleher.h...</a>

People like Notch continually prove and re-prove, to me, the fact that you don't need a huge company, 3 million patents, and an army of lawyers to make money.<p>Between things like this and his stance on piracy[1], it makes for a pleasant counterpoint to all the depressing stories on Techdirt.<p>[1] <a href="http://notch.tumblr.com/post/1121596044/how-piracy-works" rel="nofollow">http://notch.tumblr.com/post/1121596044/how-piracy-works</a>

It's incredible how Notch (the Minecraft creator) turned this lawsuit into a huge PR campaign.<p>The smartest thing Bethesda could do is accept his invitation. Make it big. Live broadcasting etc. There's so much to win for both companies, regardless of the actual outcome of the match.

Bit of blogspam, the original was posted yesterday with a lot of comments. <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2895491" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2895491</a>

Discussed yesterday from the original source: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2895491" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2895491</a>

I'm sure this would go down awesomely with the board.<p>Board: So why don't we have that trademark anymore? Bethesda: Oh we gambled and lost it in a game of Quake 3 deathmatch ...<p>Seriously? :)

There's a startup somewhere in this idea. I'd pay to be a spectator of this match.

Quake champions, get ready to send your resumes to Bethesda. ;-)

Haha, more lawsuits should be settled this way, that or thunderdome...