The owners of the Legend of the Five Rings card game were forced to change the art on the card backs because, according to the International Olympic Committee, it was too similar to the design of the Olympic rings. (For a Collectible Card Game, changing the card backs is pretty much a death sentence for the value of any cards made pre-change.)
In Before I Kill You, Mister Bond... from Cheapass Games, the premise is that supervillains don't just shoot the captured superspy because he's worth more points if he's taunted a few times first. After a cease-and-desist letter from MGM, it was pulled off the market (2000), then reissued as James Ernest's Totally Renamed Spy Game (2004). Later it was reissued again as Before I Kill You, Mister Spy... (2016).
In the 1970s, TSR narrowly avoided a lawsuit from Chaosium when they tried to incorporate the Cthulhu Mythos into the nascent Dungeons & Dragons. Chaosium, who had been sold the right to produce Lovecraft-related board games by copyright holder Arkham House, stipulated that TSR could keep the content if they credited Chaosium's "Call of Cthulhu" series. TSR backed down and removed the content instead.
A similar situation occurred with Elric material, Chaosium owning the rights and TSR publishing some content. It didn't help that Michael Moorcock failed to realize that two different companies were involved and approved TSR's publishing material he had licensed to Chaosium. The situation was resolved as with the Cthulhu material.
TSR also produced a board game called The Battle of the Five Armies in the mid-70s based on The Hobbit. They were forced to remove it from the market because they did not license it with the Tolkien estate before hand. The more Tolkien-inspired aspects of Dungeons & Dragons disappeared soon after, or were renamed as more lawyer-friendly versions (hobbits became halflings, ents became treants, etc.).
After Gary Gygax was forced out of TSR he decided to create a new fantasy role-playing game with Game Designers Workshop. He was going to call it Dangerous Dimensions, but when TSR threatened a lawsuit saying "DD" was too close to "D&D" he changed it to Dangerous Journeys. The first few books were produced, then TSR sued anyway for copyright infringement, seemingly based on the idea that it was an updated version of D&D. In an out-of-court settlement they ended up buying the rights to the game, and they immediately shelved it.
The James Bond 007 RPG published by Victory Games (part of Avalon Hill) starting in 1983 got it twice. The first was that because of Kevin McClory's lawsuit, Victory Games was not allowed to make any mention of SPECTRE or Ernst Stavro Blofeld note apart from a single line mentioning that Blofeld was behind the murder of James Bond's wife, Teresa di Vicenzo, in the Q Manual entry for the Lancia Zagato, so they created an Expy of the same organization named TAROT, led by Karl Ferenc Skorpios, for the game's background. The second was that Victory Games and Danjaq LLC got into arguments over licensing payments that resulted in the game being forced to cease publication in 1987.
The Pokémon trading card game: The franchise's owners were sued by self-proclaimed psychic Uri Geller, who claimed they used his persona in a negative way as Kadabra. The company won, saying it didn't base Pokemon on people (although Hitmonlee and Hitmonchan and Wobbuffet may beg to differ, and, in all fairness, the Japanese name for the mon, "Yungerer", and said mon's use of bending spoons to demonstrate psychic powers are clear references), but there still hasn't been a release since then of a Kadabra card in the game. Oddly, Abra and Alakazam do show up, even though (since older cards, including all printed Kadabra cards, are disallowed in tournaments) Alakazam can only be played nowadays with special cards allowing the playing of evolved Pokemon, or in the case of a few Japanese releases, as special variants that don't count as evolved at all. Eventually, Geller decided to give permission to The Pokemon Company to print cards of Kadabra again in 2020.
When White Wolf released their sci-fi game Æon, they ran afoul of MTV, who saw it as challenging their trademarks for Æon Flux. WW settled things by renaming Æon to Trinity; as a result, copies of the original corebook with the Æon name are much sought after. The new edition gets around the issue by making the full title Trinity Continuum: Æon, which is apparently different enough for the lawyers.
Games Workshop loves this trope, as seen under "Damnatus" in the Fan Works section, among others. However, one case ultimately resulted in Hoist by His Own Petard, which was a legal battle with Chapterhouse Studios, a third-party that creates bits and models that aren't available from either GW or their subsidiary Forge World. Chapterhouse Studios won the battle because the judge in question had done extensive research into both companies and the subject, then ruled that he saw in no sensible way how Games Workshop had created their own "style" which in turn could be legally copyrighted (only having Shoulders of Doom and skull iconography doesn't cut it). He also judged that Games Workshop cannot copyright models they don't produce (Chapterhouse Studios for example offered full kits that could be used for Warhammer 40,000 since Games Workshop had no actual models released in these cases, only rules). GW, spiteful, then proceeded to pull everything they did not have a model for from their later rule books. Hoist by His Own Petard finally kicked in when the fans of the game, upset about the removal of beloved units and heroes, dialed down shopping which contributed to GW's long string of failing sales.
They later did it again when they released Warhammer: Age of Sigmar, renaming their Orc, Elf and Dwarf factions with trademarkable but ridiculous names "Orruk", "Aelf" and "Duardin", among others.
This trend would continue with 40K when GW tried but failed to trademark the name "Space Marine." This resulted in the Imperial Guard being officially renamed to the Astra Militarum, and would continue with the release of the Gathering Storm supplements and the 8th edition rules by changing the Eldar race to the Aeldari (as the word 'Eldar' was coined by J. R. R. Tolkien to describe the elves), the Craftworld Eldar to the Asuryani or simply Craftworlders, the Dark Eldar to the Drukhari, and the Tau race to the name of their homeworld, T'au.
Due to an "uncommon legal issue", the Digital Tabletop Game Adaptation of Point Salad had to be removed from Board Game Arena and made "private": only players who have played it before can see it.
Due to "difficulties regarding the intellectual property rights status about this game", the Digital Tabletop Game Adaptation of Koryŏ was removed from Board Game Arena and made "private" so that you can only see it if you've played it before.
In 2023, Paizo went on a massive spree of Orwellian Retcons to clear the Pathfinder IP of potentially copyrightable materials borrowed from Dungeons & Dragons, following the Open Game License controversy at their competitor Wizards of the Coast in January of that year. The drow in particular got it in the shorts and were ejected from the setting entirely in favor of expanding the role of the serpentfolk.
at their competitor Wizards of the Coast in January of that year. The drow in particular got it in the shorts and were ejected from the setting entirely in favor of expanding the role of the serpentfolk.