
King.com, makers of Candy Crush Saga – Trademark Trolls with a Double Standard? - bpierre
http://junkyardsam.com/kingcopied/#
======
zyb09
The success of King.com really bothers me. Sure their games are not cheap and
made very well, but it seems the whole "game" and all mechanics are just
designed to slowly get you hooked and extract money at the most susceptible
time. And it's executed almost to the point of perfection.

It's a shame it's working so well, because they are eating the cake in front
of a very low confidence game industry. Smartphones are powerful now, yet
games that manage to match the quality and depth of an SNES-era game are
basically non-existent. After seeing the success of Rovio, Zynga and King, I
don't think they will be made sadly. Let's just hope this doesn't affect other
platforms as well.

~~~
sillysaurus2
_Smartphones are powerful now, yet games that manage to match the quality and
depth of an SNES-era game are basically non-existent. After seeing the success
of Rovio, Zynga and King, I don 't think they will be made sadly._

It's important to realize that our tastes aren't necessarily representative of
people's tastes in general. Most people probably wouldn't enjoy Chrono Trigger
or FF3 compared to Candy Crush. The evidence is that Final Fantasy games have
been available for smartphones for a long time now, but they just aren't
selling. The storytelling experience is the same, but people aren't as into
them.

It's easy to label the industry as "low confidence" but reality is more along
the lines of "acts on hard data." It's wise to be cautious when it only takes
one or two mistakes to kill your company.

~~~
DanBC
I don't care about people liking Candy Crush. Match 3 is a huge genre.

It's just sad that there isn't a clone that costs $4.99 to buy and doesn't
need more purchases. It's even sadder that even if the clone did exist few
people would buy it.

I really miss the Doom model of give away a few levels cor free and buy the
rest.

~~~
officemonkey
I don't understand why people think Candy Crush is bad. I've played Candy
Crush for close to a year (I'm on level 153) and I haven't spent a dime.

Sure, I've played the same level for weeks on end, but I haven't bought
anything.

Of course I've been tempted to push the button, spend 99 cents and bypass the
level, but I have something called willpower and a certain amount of pride
that every level I've beaten is legit.

~~~
elliottcarlson
I've been somewhat addicted to Candy Crush for the last few months (at level
305 now - long commutes give me way too much free time) and I haven't spent a
dime either. What was surprising to hear was that some co-workers have paid at
every "world" change - and they didn't know there was a way to get through to
the next world without paying. It seems, when it is hooked up to your Facebook
account, you don't have the option to play the three bonus levels over the
course of 24 hours each - only nagging FB friends and paying. The trick is to
just sign-out of FB in-game, play the three levels and then connect it back up
if you wanted to.

~~~
jlees
Yes, I only realised this recently. I got into the habit of paying (although
via FB, as the cost to unlock new levels is 2 credits - 20c - rather than
$0.99).

However, I'm actually quite happy to pay for the content directly. Developers
don't work for free, and they're constantly adding to the game. I like to
support them (and other devs) as so many people expect to get hundreds of
hours of gameplay for free these days.

I don't see an issue with paying for content gates in such a fashion -- but I
do dislike the "Pay $0.99 to get 5 more moves, you've nearly done it!"
mechanic, and others like it, so I don't pay for those.

------
pirateking
As someone who grew up in the Golden Age of video games, this makes me sad.
You are no longer the player and the thing in your hand is not the game. The
player is the company the game is you.

Maybe it was always like so, and I was young and having too much fun to
realize. It really does seem like the idea of painting rich immersive worlds
with challenging skills to learn and master has been tossed aside, in favor of
simplified Skinner boxes with the minimum required skinning of a game and pay
to play. Even more sad is how successful these "games" are. A reflection of
the times I suppose - no time for dawdling about reading story or exploring
worlds, quick information and quick rewards please, because time is too
important to waste.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
I think its obvious that mobile is a ghetto. The touch based controls don't
really lend themselves to anything complex gaming-wise and high-information
gamers aren't ignoring their PCs and consoles for them. It just leaves low-
information casuals who jump into whatever skinner box time-waster is popular
today.

In the meantime, the PC master race is having a renaissance of sorts and the
new batch of consoles look pretty good.

~~~
luckyno13
I have made an effort in the recent weeks to try to explore the popular
titles, and even some obscure ones and I have to agree. I have always said
that gaming on the go is not really anything I care about, as my PC is where I
want to game. But with some life shifts I have found myself on the go a little
bit more with some spare time and honestly, the Play marketplace offers a
bunch of half assed efforts imo.

There are games that are free, but pay to win. There are games that cost, but
no way to know if they are worth a damn other than buying and going after your
refund quickly. We wont even go into totally free stuff.

So while you obviously arent on par with popular opinion, I agree with you. I
for one am hoping that the shift to PC architecture in the new consoles will
speed up our renaissance ultimately. Ive been having the most fun gaming
single player lately than I have in a long time.

------
Argorak
By the way, King did not only file trademark for "candy", but also "saga",
which turns out to be a problem for "The Banner Saga".

[http://www.polygon.com/2014/1/22/5335766/stoic-king-is-
hinde...](http://www.polygon.com/2014/1/22/5335766/stoic-king-is-hindering-
banner-saga-sequel)

This is especially weird, as "saga" is quite common:

[http://www.metacritic.com/search/game/saga/results](http://www.metacritic.com/search/game/saga/results)

~~~
turtle4
I guess that is what I don't understand here. Why was the trademark granted
when it clearly isn't unique? Do they just grant all requests and let the
courts sort them out, or what?

~~~
rhino369
Pretty much. Trademarks aren't really granted they are "registered." Instead
of a presumed legal right like say a patent or copyright, it's more like a
warning "Hey I'm using this name!" It's purpose is so that you can pick a name
nobody is using.

Trademark law isn't like copyright. It's not universal. It's limited by market
scope and market geography. And the analysis is mainly focused on how
confusing it would be to customers.

Trademark law is actually pretty sensible when you learn about it. But it's
not easy to describe in short summary.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Trademark registration has an examination process where an expert looks at the
details of the application and judges as to whether it meets the statutory
requirements. It's just different nomenclature.

This
[http://lawoffashion.com/blog/story/11/16/2012/164](http://lawoffashion.com/blog/story/11/16/2012/164)
is an interview with an ex-USPTO trademark examiner turned trademark attorney.

That's not to say that every application for registration is treated with
rigour and care just that there is absolutely an examination procedure. In the
UK one of the targets is [was] a high degree of validity, ie if courts
overturn the registration then you've failed.

You don't have to pick a name no-one is using ... that's Trademarks 101 right
there. But you knew that as you intimate in your second para.

------
higherpurpose
It may not be a rule, but why does it seem like the companies who shamelessly
steal from others are usually the ones to attack others for infringement when
they turn into bigger companies? I remember Zynga being in a similar
situation, ripping off other people's games early on, and then attacking
others for copying "their" games.

It must be some kind of "organization insecurity", or some kind of "thieves
knowing thieves" kind of thing. I actually don't mind seeing companies "being
inspired", even more heavily, by other companies' products, but it pisses me
off when they do it themselves, too, and then start attacking others for doing
it to them.

~~~
edraferi
Because money.

Firms don't aggressively protect their IP out of some sense of global justice,
they do it to make money. These firms understand the value of IP and the legal
mechanisms that exist to protect/acquire/monetize it better than the average.
Why would they hesitate to use this knowledge offensively?

~~~
dinkumthinkum
The point was many successful companies don't do this.

------
dimman
How about this comparison?

BlockBreaker is a game by a friend of mine:
[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/block-
breaker/id412901690?mt...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/block-
breaker/id412901690?mt=8)

It won a best game award 2011 and King offered him a job after that
competition. He turned it down though.

King then came out with: Pet Rescue Saga (quick google will give you images of
how that one looks)

~~~
andrewingram
If the game is what I think it is based on the screenshots, then it's existed
in various forms for a very long time.

~~~
aestra
Yep I played flash versions over 10 years ago!

~~~
dimman
I figured it might have existed previously and don't mean that he would have
invented the idea. _Although_ , I find it quite interesting that King launches
a _very_ similar game as the author who just turned down their offer. It just
isn't possible for one person to compete in terms of marketing with a giant
like King.

------
leafo
If you're a game developer (or just want to make a game) then we're hosting a
game jam in protest of their "candy" trademark. Make a game about candy. Check
it out: [http://thecandyjam.com](http://thecandyjam.com)

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res0nat0r
I always thought for the 10 minutes I installed Candy Crush before deleting
it, that was a clone of Bejeweled from Pop Cap (and I'm sure that's a clone
from somewhere else).

~~~
TomiHiltunen
Take a look at "Juice Cubes". It's a game by Rovio. They are pretty much the
same game with Candy Crush. I just enjoy playing Rovio's version a bit more.

It's like the Batman movies by different directors. It's the same basic
concept but others are still better and more enjoyable than the rest.

~~~
NKCSS
Disney's Frozen Free Fall also.

------
maaarghk
I hate king.com for the many hours of potential productivity that I have paid
them for the privilege of losing. Whenever I talk about how I was stupid for
playing Candy Crush I feel like I'm victim blaming.

Anyway, horrible company culture; I don't think they can reasonably expect
great success from behaving in this manner.

~~~
emitstop
Really? C'mon man have some self control for god sakes. It's a video game on a
phone.

I'm not particularly fond of micro-transactions, I cannot stand the way
intellectual property is handled in this country (US), and I dislike rip-off
artists such as Zynga/King.

However, all King is doing here is playing ball with current IP legislation,
protecting whatever trademarks they can. There's hundreds of games that are
exactly the same in every category of gaming, just because King has the
capability to create a high-quality successful series of mobile games (which
are based off of extremely common gaming concepts) does not mean they are
horrible people.

People get up in arms when these large corporations sue eachother over
intellectual property. Why does the HN community have this double standard
whenever a "little guy" can be made out to have been harmed? Just because
you're the first person to think of a popular idea doesn't mean you own it
forever.

Patent/Trademark/Copyright legislation is very clearly all bunk in the age of
the internet. Get mad at the stupid laws, not at the people taking advantage
of them.

~~~
deletes
Anyone willing to spend non-trivial resources to retaliate, because of a
business deal that didn't get completed, is a sociopath.

Also king is currently involved in a banner saga "saga", suing developers of a
game of a completely different genre because they used the word saga in their
title. [http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/01/22/king-are-
trying-t...](http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/01/22/king-are-trying-to-
candy-crush-the-banner-
saga/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+RockPaperShotgun+%28Rock%2C+Paper%2C+Shotgun%29)

------
chenster
This is ridiculous! The provisional trademark "Candy" should be refused under
Section 2(e)(1) Refusal – Merely Descriptive. Simple as that!

"...A mark is merely descriptive if it describes an ingredient, quality,
characteristic, function, feature, purpose, or use of an applicant’s goods
and/or services. TMEP §1209.01(b); see, e.g., DuoProSS Meditech Corp. v.
Inviro Med. Devices, Ltd., ___ F.3d ___, 103 USPQ2d 1753, 1755 (Fed. Cir.
2012) (quoting In re Oppedahl & Larson LLP, 373 F.3d 1171, 1173, 71 USPQ2d
1370, 1371 (Fed. Cir. 2004)); In re Steelbuilding.com, 415 F.3d 1293, 1297, 75
USPQ2d 1420, 1421 (Fed. Cir. 2005) (citing Estate of P.D. Beckwith, Inc. v.
Comm’r of Patents, 252 U.S. 538, 543 (1920))."

King.com must've bribed the trademark officials. Disgusting!

------
ozh
The _main_ problem here is not that King copies games. Lots of games, few
ideas, this has always been the situation. The main problem here is that a
company is allowed to trademark a word like "Candy" or "Saga".

Evil company, maybe, retarded laws, very obviously.

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
_Really_? I'd much rather they acted stupidly over names than went out and
blatantly copied people's games. The former is an annoyance which can be
worked around, the latter destroys peoples livelihoods.

------
aaargh
A Double Standard if I ever saw one. Who could have guessed that a company
that develops a 'human skinner box' and brands it Candy crush would be evil.

"Pssst.. want some candy? Just give this game a try, there's no reason for
fear, we're not evil. Look at the sparkling colors!"

------
meerita
I'm removing right now Candy Crush. Thanks for this post. I hate these
ungrateful people.

------
jamesbrownuhh
Clearly King.com don't end up looking like the good guys here - although as
the article does freely admit, "Scamperghost isn't the most original game in
the world. It's obviously inspired by Pac-Man" ...

Which rather does bring to mind the supposed conversation between Bill Gates
and Steve Jobs, where Jobs suggests that Windows has copied the Macintosh, but
Gates responds that "I think it's more like we both had this rich neighbour
named Xerox..."

No kudos to king.com either way. In cases like these I'm almost inclined to
wish that someone would just come up with a really really good "inspired
by..." game and release it for free just for the hell of it. (Not terribly
good business, admittedly, but you have to admit it would be pretty
satisfying. I don't see a "Sugar Crash" in the app store yet...) :)

------
TeeWEE
Lets boycot them (as if hacker news people are playing their games ;-)

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
I _was_ , I'm ashamed to admit. No longer.

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waylandsmithers
I hate to be such a cynic here, but isn't this pretty much standard practice
in the mobile gaming space? It seems to be the wild wild west as far as
copyright goes.

I remember reading a piece on Zynga maybe a year or two ago that detailed the
games that were ripped off (apart from the obvious scramble = boggle, words =
scrabble) almost exactly from other existing but much less popular games in
the app store.

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TomiHiltunen
To anyone who have played arcade games and flash games decade(s) ago knows
that so many games today are pure retries of older games. Just take a look on
the games of Rovio and others. One thing that pops in mind is "I've played
this game before". Great thing is that they make the good, original idea of
the game more enjoyable with better ramification and execution.

~~~
Pxtl
I can't stand how people bag on Rovio. Their games are intelligent and fun and
even a bit _educational_ (educational content stuffed into Angry Birds Space,
and Amazing Alex is _great_ for getting kids to solve problems creatively).
Yes, they're derivative, but they add a tremendous amount to their
predecessors. Angry Birds is a far better game than Crush the Castle, and The
Amazing Alex is the first solidly-good implementation of TIM in over a decade
and has a ton of interesting ideas that add to the concept.

And they have only the most _minimal_ inclusion of the In-App-Purchase crap.
They don't make cash-driven Skinner boxes.

People bag on Rovio because they were the first big smash hit of the mobile
world, not for any _good_ reason.

------
sleepyK
Mobile games have pivoted from being short, fun to play vignettes into honey
traps that lure you in and get you hooked to consume your time and/or money.

Every major studio out there makes formulaic bull that basically copies some
other schmuck's idea and adds their own "StudioCoin" on top to monetize the
game.

Temple Run spawned hundreds of clones, then Candy Crush clones came out and
now apparently it's Clash of Clans clones. Everyone from EA to Mobage does
this cloning instead of focusing on bringing new ideas to the table. If only
they tried to innovate, the crappy studios like King would go out of business.

Indie developers try hard, but it takes a team to make a well rounded game
with large scale mass appeal... :/

tl;dr Today's mobile games are time consuming black holes, and once done
credible competition comes forth, they're sure sink.

~~~
Macsenour
I mostly agree with you but I have 2 points:

1) I wouldn't say "from being short...", I think it's more accurate to say
"from JUST short...". My reasoning here is that we have deeper long games,
heck Knights of the Old Republic comes to mind, and short fun games like Cut
The Rope.

2) Couldn't you say basically the same thing about the movie industry,
regarding the lack of new ideas and abundant cloning? When games and movies
take so much investment, it's not always easy to convince barely imaginative
accountants to spend the money.

------
oneeyedpigeon
Utterly disgusting. Candy Crush deleted.

------
rbritton
This article is the first thing on my mind for anything King.com:
[http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/RaminShokrizade/20130626/1949...](http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/RaminShokrizade/20130626/194933/The_Top_F2P_Monetization_Tricks.php)

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CmonDev
How embarrassing would it be for a gamedev to be working for them... I hope
their best coders will leave.

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m0skit0
Is this a surprise to anyone? In capitalism, money is the only thing that
matters. What do you expect?

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
We expect some regulation to uphold the supposed ideals of capitalism, one of
which is competition. But if that regulation just doesn't happen then, yes,
capitalism looks pretty broken.

------
erikb
I don't really see a problem here. You have copyright on the code but not on
an idea. I think when Nintendo and the Tetris guys fight smart game developers
in making games like Tetris or Super Mario it hurts me as a gamer much more
than such kind of copycat.

~~~
Peroni
This wasn't just an idea. This was a product close to launch. The implicit
instruction from King was to clone what already existed, not "take their idea
and make it".

------
rblstr
King.com have been around forever pretty much copying every game type it
could. Bejeweled, Bubble Bobble, Peggle, and tons of board games. I'm not
surprised at all. Their games are pretty good clones though.

------
benologist
This was an interesting part of King's history. Years ago back when they were
just a skill gaming site they used to license flash games over at FGL.com
which spread virally and funnel traffic back to your site from other gaming
websites that host the game.

I forget the exact details but some friends of mine made the clone after the
originals' licensing deal went to a competing portal at the last minute.

------
donniezazen
Why were they even allowed to trademark a generic word like Candy? Can they
ask Websters or Oxford to remove word candy from their dictionaries?

~~~
pbhjpbhj
You can use a trademark. You can't lawfully use someone else's registered
trademark to sell goods/services in the same category or when there is
confusion as to where the goods originate from though.

Pepsi can mention Coca Cola in their ads, they can sing and dance about them
if they want to. As soon as they put it on their packets (or use other
trademarks like the Coca Cola livery) and create the possibility of confusion
in consumers as to whether Coca Cola made the Pepsi product or not [at least
enough to convince a court] then they're in trouble and Coca Cola _should_ be
able to successfully sue.

------
AznHisoka
Most businesses and entrepreneurs have a double standard. We complain when
someone doesn't answer our help desk call on weekends, yet are determined not
to work on weekends ourselves. We complain when an UI of an app we're using in
unintuitive, yet when someone complains about your app, you tell them you got
lots of bug to address and know about it.

------
sebastianconcpt
The world has way too many problems to crush time and brainpower down the
drain.

I'll never touch this game or games from people with this ethos

~~~
dblacc
if only the rest of the world thought like this. Not the case unfortunatly

------
thepumpkin1979
King is the New Zynga, no surprise there.

------
baldajan
King.com is ridiculous for sure. I do wish someone that has used the word
candy in the title of their game before Candy Crush still sells/trades in
significant volume. If so, they can still contact the USPTO and have the mark
invalidated - process is lengthy, but exists.

------
abjorn
It's not like Candy Crush was original in the first place.

------
davemel37
This shouldn't surprise anybody. It's the very same behavior that drives
stealing a game, that drives protecting yourself from being knocked off.

------
viach
They should have trademarked Clone Cash instead

------
jgreen10
I don't see the big deal. No one's making a fuzz about Apple being a
trademark. At least Candy is a man-made object.

------
slr555
Best of luck trademarking the word Candy. You can put a TM next to the pope
but that does make the cross yours.

------
robmcm
I thought this was rife in the game industry. Everything's a remix these days
anyway.

~~~
timje1
A remix is like 'lets take the slick visuals of X, but with a Zoo theme, the
power-up system of Y and the smooth movement of Z to create something new-ish
but recognisable!'.

This is a large company realising that their smaller competition doesn't want
to sell - and reacting by cloning the game and trying to push it to market
before the smaller company can get it out there.

It's just Zynga all over again.

------
wnevets
so did angry birds and most popular mobile games. There were flash trebuchet
games years before angry birds with the exact same gameplay

