No Man Sky in trouble? Developers may have a patent problem.

[Chazore]

FunFan said:

A dutch company called Genicap is claiming they own the "super-formula" used as the basis for No Man Sky procedually generated Space. And they do have a very good case as No Man Sky devs already discussed a year ago that they were using a formula created by a plant geneticist named Johan Gielis who happens to work at Genicaps. Well, seems this formula was patented back in 2004. 

Still, the timing of this claim seems a bit too convenient as the game was close to launch on PC, but this dispute may force another delay until things are settled. It could take years to settle anything in court, but something tells me Genicap might be very willing to settle things outside. Regardless of what happens this is a very unfortunate event for No Man Sky developer as they seem to be caught in a lose-lose situation here. In case the worst happens, at least we still have Starbound.

Article from Gamezone. Original Report from Telegraaf.

Speaking of which, Starbound is due to release on Fri 22nd http://playstarbound.com/starbound-release-announcement/

I'll have to make me thread on that today at some point.

OT: it seems a bit coincidental that someone would make a case just now when the game is nearing release. I've seen enough times to take notice of some folks who step forward when a celeb cashes in on a million or makes a decent amount of cash, only to have someone step in and suddenly say they were attacked by them or something, same with companies that see how popular something has become and only then do they want some of the pie, if it wasn't popular and failed then a majority of the time no case would be made, at least not as often. 

The other thing about this to note is Hello games didn't ask the original owner to see if it was okay to use it and as some above have pointed out, they have had no contact from HG either when asked about them using it.