In the grand carnival of gaming legal dramas, few episodes have felt quite as enjoyably absurd as the time Hazelight Studios discovered that calling a game It Takes Two was roughly like a lighthouse keeper objecting to someone naming a fishing boat The Lighthouse. The publisher Take-Two Interactive did not sue for copyright infringement, demand a name change, or try to yank the co-op adventure from store shelves. Instead, the company simply flexed its trademark muscles hard enough to make Hazelight abandon its own attempt to own the name.
🎮 The Claim That Took Two
Back in late 2021, It Takes Two was enjoying a wave of Game Awards attention, with plenty of chatter surrounding the co-op puzzle-platformer’s numerous nominations. Then a different kind of attention arrived: Take-Two Interactive, the publishing giant, raised a trademark claim over the phrase “It Takes Two” because it struck a little too close to the company’s own name. The legal team weren’t claiming Hazelight had copied a game, a character, or a single line of code. They were simply squinting at the title and deciding it lived in the same linguistic neighborhood as their corporate identity.
At first glance, the whole affair looked like a legal anvil dropped into a kiddie pool. Hazelight had created a warm, chaotic, divorce-repairing co-op romp, and suddenly the main antagonist turned out to be a paperwork objection. But the situation was more tedious than catastrophic.
🕰️ A Timeline of Legal Squinting
The behind-the-scenes timeline made the story even stranger. According to reports from Eurogamer and records from the US Patent and Trademark Office, Hazelight received a notice of abandonment confirming that the studio stopped its attempts to secure a trademark for the name on March 30, 2021. That was just four days after It Takes Two launched on March 26, 2021. In other words, the game had barely been out long enough for players to argue about who should control the nail and who should hammer it, and the trademark effort was already being quietly shelved.
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| March 26, 2021 | It Takes Two launches on PC and consoles |
| March 30, 2021 | Hazelight’s trademark attempt receives a notice of abandonment |
| Late 2021 | Game Awards buzz and Eurogamer report bring the dispute to light |
The timeline suggested Take-Two’s objection may have been bubbling long before release, yet Hazelight went ahead with the title anyway. It was less a dramatic courtroom showdown and more a passive-aggressive administrative standoff.
🧯 What Hazelight Lost, and What It Didn’t
Luckily, Take-Two wasn’t claiming that Hazelight had infringed on the publisher’s intellectual property in a way that would require It Takes Two to vanish from stores or adopt an awkward new name like It Takes Two... Legally Distinct. That meant the game could keep its title, keep its marketing, and keep making players yell at each other about synchronized platforming.
The real sting was quieter. Without trademark ownership, Hazelight couldn’t stop other studios from making games with the same name. Imagine spending years building a beloved co-op experience, only to discover the name is legally up for grabs because a publishing giant refused to let you claim it. The trademark denial didn’t hand Hazelight a loss in the traditional sense. It simply opened the door for a future where some unrelated shovelware title could call itself It Takes Two and nobody would have a quick legal lever to pull.
When Eurogamer asked about a potential rebrand, Hazelight declined to say whether anything was in the works. The studio’s earlier comment that it couldn’t speak on the situation but “hopefully it will be resolved” felt like the corporate equivalent of a shrug while holding a very tiny umbrella.
🦅 Take-Two’s Trademark Talons
This sort of behavior wasn’t new for Take-Two. The company has built a reputation for trademark claims involving words such as “rockstar,” “mafia,” and “civilization,” all of which are associated with its published titles. Watching Take-Two’s legal team operate is a bit like watching a hawk circle a pigeon named Hazelight that just wanted to build a nest on the same roof. The publisher’s legal talons aren’t always used to destroy; sometimes they’re used to make sure nobody else gets comfortable with a word that sounds even vaguely like something Take-Two believes it owns.
Hazelight was not the first studio to feel that talon grip, and the odds suggested it wouldn’t be the last. The whole episode became another entry in a long line of trademark blockades from a publishing giant that treats language itself as a competitive multiplayer arena.
🌤️ The 2026 Afterglow
As of 2026, It Takes Two remains one of the most beloved co-op oddities of the decade, and the trademark storm has done little to dim its reputation. The game is still available on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S, and players continue to guide its bickering protagonists through whimsical worlds that double as marriage counseling. The legal skirmish now reads like a strange footnote: a reminder that in the games industry, sometimes the hardest boss fight happens not in-game, but at the trademark office.
Hazelight kept the name, the game kept its heart, and Take-Two kept its reputation as the neighbor who definitely notices if your mailbox paint is too close to their favorite shade of beige.