Update: Not only is Justin Roiland confirmed as a Presenter during the show, but in a Twitter DM he confirmed to me that, yes, they are announcing a game tomorrow: “Haha yes,” he wrote when I asked. “What could it be? ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE!”
Original: Today I got a pretty interesting email. Squanchtendo, the VR company launched by Rick and Morty Co-Creator Justin Roiland and former Epic Games Producer Tanya Watson, is changing its name. The “Squanch” is still there of course, as a reference to Roiland’s hit cartoon, but the rest is getting dropped off. And you’ll never guess why…
Here’s the full statement:
“We recently discovered a video game related company with a similar name to our former name. We never could have predicted the discovery of a video game entity with such a similar name. What a surprise to us. We were shocked and surprised. So we decided in order to avoid confusion we are changing the back half of our name! We are now Squanch Games! Hooray! Also it’s National Microwave Oven Day! Did you know that? Go celebrate!”
Obviously they’re referring to Nintendo. I’m not sure if the Big N reached out or threatened legal action at all, or if this was always part of the joke/plan, but here we are. In my original announcement piece I wrote based on my interviews with the two co-founders, I asked them what they thought about the name similarities, to which Roiland aptly responded: “Multiple reality theory says there are all kinds of -tendos out there.”
They also edited their About Us comic appropriately:
At the end of the email there’s also a slight hint at news that could be coming tomorrow during The Game Awards pre-show, stating that:
“We have more cool things to talk about but we will be too busy watching the Video Game Awards tomorrow. Maybe you should be too? In particular the pre-show. That’s going to be exciting.”
We’ve reached out to both Roiland and Watson for comment on what this tease means and will update this story if we hear anything back. Up until now the studio’s only release has been the hilarious free-to-play interactive adventure, Accounting. All we know about their next project is that it’s a “long-form” VR game.
The Game Awards are happening tomorrow, December 7th, 2017 at 5:30PM PT and features a slew of VR game nominations including Resident Evil 7, Farpoint, Lone Echo, and more.
