

A Game of Clones: Video Game Litigation Illustrated - pdw
http://adlervermillion.com/copyright-illustrated-video-game-clones/

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throwaway857248
A few weeks ago I was a bit surprised to see an older game of ours posted to
HN, in an iOS version. Except we never developed the iOS version because it
was never much of a commercial success on PC.

The pirate developer had copied the whole game wholesale, using the assets
from the PC version, and presumably hoping to trade on the name recognition of
it. He'd done a pretty good job too, it was getting good ratings. I suppose it
was making a bit of money from ads and in-app purchases.

I had to remove links from Wikipedia and I used the forms Wordpress and Apple
provide for copyright and trademark infringements. He took it down from the
app store following that.

Many of my older games have been cloned in gameplay and in almost exact copies
of graphics, musics, and title, but this was the first time someone made a
pretty legitimate looking port to a different platform.

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bigtunacan
I love seeing old games I've played on different systems come to newer
platforms, whether that is phones, PC, newer consoles etc...

As I wane nostalgic for this titles I have often wondered if I could convince
X developer to let me port their old game to a new platform in agreement for a
profit sharing agreement. All of the risk would be on me for putting in the
work, but I'm not sure how to go about this.

I certainly would not just copy someone else's game wholesale though. As
someone who creates games myself that is just a shitty thing to do.

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throwaway857248
It's worth asking. In the case I'm talking about it would have been simple
since we own all the rights, but for previous game I didn't do as good a job
at negotiating, and gave the publishers some contractual rights that would
probably make it too complicated.

Especially since the publisher has been sold to a megacorp who no longer care
about me.

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KeytarHero
> _Similarly, Mino also displays “garbage” lines, “ghost” pieces, and a
> preview of the next piece to fall in order to enhance game play as does
> Tetris…. I am not persuaded that these features constitute either the ideas
> or rules of Tetris or are necessitated by game play._

Interesting that intuitive controls are typically not copyrightable, yet it
sounds like intuitive UI elements are.

Also, it seems the rules for what is copyrightable are very different from
what is patentable (see: slide to unlock). If Capcom had patented "method of
simulating fighting moves with an 8-way joystick", like it or not, I'm
guessing things would have gone very differently.

> _The court also filtered out unprotectable game mechanics. Using a six-by-
> six game grid is not an expressive choice. “A grid that is too small would
> make the game trivial; a grid that is too large would make it pointless.”_

I find this an interesting contrast with the fact that Tetris' tetrominoes are
considered expression. As the blog points out, the game would be far too easy
with triominoes but far too difficult with pentominoes. I don't know that much
about copyright law, but I wonder if that part of the Tetris decision just
boils down to the opinion of that particular judge?

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alexc05
I really liked this article. Normally I'd open something say "neat" and close
it, as soon as I got bored. For your article, each example of the law in a
case by case analysis was interesting and I felt like I was learning things
that ran counter to assumptions I'd made over time.

"Games aren't copyrightable" was my previous assumption, but actually it seems
to be the case that the reality is more nuanced.

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mrspeaker
Amazing article! But in response to "Any comments would be great" I would
suggest "Rethink the title!"
[https://www.google.com/search?q="game+of+clones"](https://www.google.com/search?q="game+of+clones")

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mechazawa
Ridiculous Fishing vs Ninja Fishing would be another great example.

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foldor
I think he was focusing solely on cases that actually went to court, which is
a good idea because it leaves judgment out of the equation and sticks to the
facts about what kinds of concepts are copyrightable and what isn't.

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hermanhermitage
The screenshot for Meteors appears to be Meteor computer game for BBC
Microcomputer and not the original Meteors arcade game.

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robocaptain
Thanks so much for writing this. Sounds cliche but, "I actually learned
something!"

