Quakeweek
May 2, 1997


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QPsychic Released

Transparent Water Spawns New Debate

id Software Hires Tom Zito

Camper Tournament Drags On

Microsoft Releases Own Quake Competitor

AOLWorld Beta Released
Children's Television Workshop Sues id Software

NEW YORK, NY (Jeff Miller) - The Children's Television Workshop, best known as the producer of Sesame Street, has filed suit against id Software for over five million dollars in unpaid underwriting fees, apparently as an unexpected result of id's increased efforts on the Internet to protect their copyright of the stylized "Q".

Frag-Me ElmoLinda Ringeisen, head of legal affairs for Sesame Street, explains that it was her assistant who first stumbled upon the case while surfing the web. "Pete, a huge Quake fan, noticed that nearly all of the major Quake pages have a disclaimer at the bottom which states that 'Q' is a copyright of id Software. When Pete ran a check through archives, we found that a total of 486 of our shows have been brought to you by the letter 'Q'. Yes, that's right--it's the very same letter."

"According to our accountants' calculations, id owes us approximately five million dollars in underwriting fees for promotion of their product, plus interest. After all, we've been advertising Quake to children of a very impressionable age for over twenty years. Considering that the vast majority of Quake's target market was virtually raised by television, we feel that we are responsible, to a large degree, for the current success of the game. We promoted Quake before Quake was cool."

The Stylized Q"Have they gone after Big 'B' Drugs?" responded Barrett Alexander, the "biz" guy at id Software. "Programmers who code in 'C'? A&P Foods? The city of Boston's rapid transit 'L'? People don't use 'Q' nearly as much as the letters 'A', 'B', 'C', 'L', and 'P', all of which have underwritten twice as many shows as the letter 'Q'. We've filed a complaint with the Federal Civil Rights Commission, because it's not just grossly unfair, it's downright discriminatory. Just because we've produced an excessively violent and slightly Satanic game that sucks huge amounts of valuable time from the lives of developing youngsters is no reason for Sesame Street to employ legal blackmail against us. Personally, I think they're just jealous."

Evidently, there is some division within the Sesame Street ranks concerning the legal action against id. Two actors, who wish to be identified only as 'B' and 'E', had this to say on the matter: "Look, we get paid little more than minimum wage to sing songs about ducks and sport bad haircuts on national television. After a long day filming this sickly sweet crap, all we want to do is gib the hell out of everyone. If Children's Television Workshop brings Quake to a halt, we're bringing a rocket launcher on the set."