You can't say Boston and not think about the Red Sox. And when you say Red Sox, any person that follows sports, or has watched any episode of ESPN's SportsCenter during any summer in the past ten years at least, automatically thinks of the team's franchise star David Ortiz.
One Texas-based gamer, Richie Branson, developed a mod of Ortiz for the new Fallout 4 video game, which takes place in a post-apocalyptic Boston. He stated that it felt "more authentic" with Ortiz in the game, donning a Red Sox jersey and wielding a spiked bat around his home field of Fenway Park, defending humans and himself against the occult of blood-sucking mutants.
But when the MLB front office got wind of it, they cried foul and threatened to take action against the gamer that used Big Papi's likeness.
“The use of these marks is an infringement of our rights. We plan to enforce those rights,” an MLB spokesman said in an e-mail on Thursday.
Branson defended his "Papi"-mod by stating:
“I’m not trying to sell this counterfeit Red Sox jersey. I’m putting a free Red Sox graphic into a game that already insinuates the Red Sox are in the game, at Fenway Park. This is something that has been going on for years and years. People are non-commercially modifying games all the time."
Do you think the MLB should let Branson (and Ortiz) live in this game? Or should they handle Branson like WWE did with Meek Mill? Leave a comment with your take on this.
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[via Boston Globe]
