

Tris Pulled from iPhone App Store - iamnirav
http://twofingerplay.blogspot.com/2008/08/over-for-now.html

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ryanwaggoner
That has to be really frustrating as a developer, to know that you could
probably prevail in court if you could afford to defend yourself, but since
you can't (and they know you can't), the mere threat of a lawsuit is enough to
make you fold.

Any sympathetic attorneys out there who might want to help the guy out with a
bit of advice at least?

~~~
iamnirav
I know the developer, and he's gotten advice from others. It's just too much
of a time and money burden for a student to take on.

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ashu
<unrelated thought>

I think the real reason why Apple has kept such tight control over the App
Store has nothing to do with the applications or quality, at all. It has to do
with iTunes and music locking. If you opened up the device, it's only time
before a variety of media players and mp3 syncing mechanisms will appear --
all without DRM, of course and without the restrictions (only sync with one
device, etc. etc.) And _that_ is what Apple can't afford to do. It could
potentially cannibalize the entire iTunes business unit.

</unrelated thought>

~~~
cstejerean
People keep thinking that Apple actually wants DRM or most of the restrictions
that come with iTunes. I'm 99% sure it has more to do with the restrictions
the music labels impose when licensing the music to them (that's for example
why you can get Apps over 3G but not music).

~~~
ashu
I agree. But regardless of whether it is Apple or the music labels that are
pushing it, it could explain the weird-ass closed format of the app-store.

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briansmith
This seems to be all about the name, not about the actual game play:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris#History>

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sysop073
I can't believe the Tetris company actually cares that people clone Tetris.
It's _the_ cloned game, there must be 10000 different clones out for every
platform in existence

~~~
axod
Sure but they might want to release a paid for version for the iPhone. It's a
different ball game.

No one in their right mind is going to pay for a tetris game for the PC, but I
can see a ton of people paying money for an official tetris game on the
iPhone.

If you're going to copy an existing game like tetris/scrabble/etc, you're
going to attract trouble.

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trezor
That AppStore besides being a single point of entry for developers, also sure
seems to be the single point of failure, single point of getting booted, not
to mention now also a handy single point of litigation for those into that
game.

Excuse me for not seeing it's brilliance.

~~~
silencio
I don't think that's really the problem here. My favorite tetris clone (quinn)
was pulled for a while because the developer ran into legal issues with the
Tetris Company.

So if Tris wasn't distributed through the app store, this likely would have
happened anyway, just mainly involving the developer and the Tetris Company,
not those two and Apple included.

~~~
trezor
Not debating that, but without the AppStore- _only_ solution people still
enjoying the game would be able to distribute it to friends and what not
without having to deal with the Tetris company.

When the AppStore is the only way to get applications for a non-jailbroken
iPhone, you lose that option and having something pulled from the AppStore
means it's gone for everyone.

~~~
silencio
Technically, the developer _can_ distribute it to friends. He's in the iPhone
developer program, he can use the ad-hoc distribution method to send it to
friends. I suspect if he "released" the source, any person in the program
could do the same.

But yes, I understand your point. The app store model has some benefits and
some downsides. The simplest thing to do is to just not buy an iPhone or
develop for one if you dislike the model. I know that I don't like some
aspects of it from both a user and developer perspective, but I like it more
than what I had to deal with when I had other smartphones/PDAs.

