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TouchArcade reported that the developer of Tris (Free) was told that Apple received a copyright notice from The Tetris Company. Since the developer is a college student, he doesn’t have the resources to defend himself, though he feels he had done no wrong, so as a result the free game will be removed from the App Store to protect himself. Tris had great control and has simple but smooth visuals, and being free it was very popular.
Well — I’ve received notice from Apple that they’ve been contacted by The Tetris® Company about Tris. That, I’m afraid, is essentially game over. Do they have a case? No. Not really. I am convinced that if it went to court, the “copyright†claim would get thrown out completely. The trademark, perhaps not — but if I changed the name, to e.g. “Trysâ€, that would be much harder for them to argue.
Recently we saw the French developer of Flying Rider, which was a clone of Line Rider, go through the same situation when the Line Rider developer told him to remove his game. Apple’s App Store is a lucrative new business model, companies want in on the money-making, while game developers just want to make fun games. I don’t think these kind of situations will be going away anytime soon, sadly.
[...] $9.99 to $7.99, likely hoping to take advantage of the attention the game has been getting lately due to the removal of the free Tetris clone, Tris, when the developer of Tris didn’t get permission from The [...]
[...] eventually release their own games, without worrying about competition. The Tetris Company did this for Tetris (by having Tris removed), inXile Entertainment did this for Line Rider iRide (by having Flying [...]
[...] Tetris Company weren’t done when they went after and subsequently had Tris removed, as they went after Shaker (Free). Shaker was originally being sold in the App Store for $9.99 but [...]