TLDR: Cats Hidden in Italy is now called Travellin Cats in Italy, due to trademark complications.
Hi everyone,
This is not a post I thought I'd ever have to make, but let me start from the beginning.
In September of 2025, Nukearts registered the trademark "Hidden Cats" in the USA, with a claimed first-use date of 2022. These past few days, they filed a trademark infringement complaint with Valve, listing many games that include the words "Hidden" and "Cats" in their titles, including all of my games.
Valve gave me until 2nd March 2026 to change the titles of all my games; otherwise they would be removed from the store. I was also informed that the new titles may not contain both HIDDEN and CATS. I may use HIDDEN in my new title, or CATS, which means this affects every Steam release since 2022 and going forward.
I do not understand how this trademark was approved, given that hidden cat games are an established genre on Steam, with titles like 100 Hidden Cats releasing well before Nukearts' first game.
Fighting this trademark would be very costly and time-consuming. Since my games are my main source of income, this was not an option.
These past few months, I had already been considering rebranding due to oversaturation in the hidden cat games market, but being forced to do so under harsh time pressure simply sucks.
A lot of other devs will be affected by this trademark as well. Some will probably have their games removed because they didn't see Valve's email in time. Since I am the biggest developer affected by this, I wanted to speak out about it. The most important thing for you:
🚨The game rebrands to Travellin Cats in Italy🚨
Please help me spread the word so that everyone hears about the name change!
Everything else stays the same!
Peace & Love
Patrick
P. S. I made a silly little app during the winter break and it's coming out this Friday! Please check it out :)