Epic Games doesn’t want creators on its platform to use trademarks to assert control over popular game genres — and the company is taking legal action to mark this boundary.
Epic made its position clear in a legal challenge filed by the Fortnite developer’s lawyers on July 14 opposing prominent creator studio Hive Studios’ attempt to trademark the name of its popular Fortnite game Edit Pump Wars, which the studio filed in August 2024. The crux of Epic’s argument is that the phrase “Edit Pump Wars” is a term widely used by members of the public and Fortnite ecosystem to describe Fortnite games involving both pump-action shotguns and the ability to edit objects built by their opponents.
Epic’s filing pointed out that, as of July 2026, Fortnite’s platform featured at least 37 islands published by creators other than Hive using the title “Edit Pump Wars,” with an additional 13 islands using the phrase as the main part of their games’ names, reflecting the phrase’s status as the name of a genre. Epic is framing its opposition to Hive’s trademark application as a move to broadly defend Fortnite developers’ creations by preventing any single developer from dominating a popular genre or category by wielding a trademark.
“Because the terminology ‘edit pump wars’ is used as or in the names of scores of video games by dozens of different creators in the Fortnite ecosystem to describe a genre of video games, Applicant’s use of the Applied-for Marks is not substantially exclusive,” Epic’s opposition filing said.
Although Hive’s Edit Pump Wars experience is among dozens of Fortnite games by that name, Hive’s version of the game appears to be one of the first published on the platform, if not the first. Hive published the first iteration of its Edit Pump Wars experience on May 22, 2020, with the game achieving a maximum concurrent player count of 6,847 in June 2023.
In April 2024, Hive edited the description of its Edit Pump Wars island to assert that it was the “original Edit Pump Wars.” In December 2024, Hive added a trademark symbol to the game’s description. Last month, following Epic’s filing, Hive removed both the claim of originality and the trademark symbol from the description of Edit Pump Wars. A Hive representative did not respond to requests for comment.
Epic’s move to block Hive’s trademark application for “Edit Pump Wars” is the latest in a series of legal challenges surrounding creators’ ability to copyright, trademark, or otherwise control the names of popular game genres on the platform. In April 2026, Fortnite studios JOGO Studios and MM Games settled a legal dispute over the similarities between the studios’ “Red vs. Blue” experiences, with MM Games claiming JOGO was infringing its copyright and JOGO arguing that “Red vs. Blue” team battles are an unprotectable genre concept.
“This is only about the name; it has nothing to do with what you can do within the game,” said Jesse Saivar, a lawyer and intellectual property expert at the law firm Greenberg Glusker, in an interview with GamesBeat. “Epic is making the argument that the term ‘Edit Pump Wars’ is just describing a type of game that can be made.”
Saivar noted that Epic’s move to block trademarks related to popular Fortnite terms like “edit” and “pump” was beneficial to the company because it could help strengthen Epic’s rights to those terms, although he made it clear that this was not the argument laid out by Epic’s lawyers in their opposition to Hive’s trademark application.
“The association always goes back to Epic, and that’s exactly what trademarks are meant to protect,” he said.
Hive’s response to Epic’s opposition filing is not due until September 12. The studio has not officially responded yet, although its removal of the trademark symbol from the description of its Edit Pump Wars experience following Epic’s filing indicates that Hive takes the challenge seriously. There is also the possibility that the dispute will be settled through direct discussions between Hive and Epic. After all, Hive is one of the most prominent creator studios in Fortnite’s ecosystem, and Epic has a vested interest in keeping the company satisfied and active on its platform.