Hasbro Wins Against Arcade Clones

Masem writes "Hasbro has won a number of settlements in a pending lawsuit with numerous game makers. According to commentary in the newsgroups, most of the games here were "direct" clones of classic arcade games that Hasbro has the rights to, such as Tetris, Pac-Man, and Astroids (Some of these aquired when they bought Atari). "Direct" here being nearly the exact same gameplay, with possibly different titles and graphics, but it's hard to confirm these beyond word of mouth or titles. "

Comments

game companies are ripping off free games

[jetson123]

I would be curious to know where Hasbro actually got the rights to Asteroids. Asteroids seems awfully close to MIT's Spacewar. And it seems that many other companies got or are getting their basic gameplay ideas from open source efforts and non-proprietary games. Diablo is basically rogue/hack with real-time and nice graphics. Alpha Centauri and Civilization are variations on a number of old multiplayer conquest games. The various space conquest games are based on a number of single and multiplayer "Trek" games for UNIX (imagine using that name in the trademark obsessed 00's). Wolfenstein 3D and others have precursors in Mazewar. One of few remaining commercially unexplored free games was robot war games, where players program their own robots and put them into competition, sometimes even used for teaching programming; that frontier has also been broken now, with a commercial PC version with nifty 3D graphics.

So, it seems to me that game companies are making proprietary games out of non-proprietary, often open source, games. They add a lot of graphics, modify the gameplay somewhat (often dumbing it down for the masses), and do a pretty good job at packaging. When the original inventor of a free game does that, I don't have a problem with it, but most of these companies are generations away from the original inventors.

Should they get the kind of eternal protection that game patents give for that? I think not. Their slick, commercial implementation of ideas deserves copyright protection (and, at that, it should probably be more limited than current copyright). In the give-and-take of ideas between non-proprietary and proprietary games, IMO, commercial game companies have been doing a lot more taking than giving.

pffft!

[fluxrad]

I personally feel that these games (as with almost anything this old) should become public domain. We're talking about games that are virtually monuments in gaming circles....no...modern life.

Raise your hand if you haven't played Tetris or PacMan...ok - the bolivian in the back of the room can put his hand down now. - But in all seriousness. These games have become so popular over time, and have been so played - and recognized that, while there is still money to be made, Hasbro (or whomever at this point) should be benevolent enough to just let people do as they will. Will someone PLEASE follow ID's lead with Quake (yes kids - there were two made before Q3A) and just (basically) give it away. (Of course, this need not turn into a thread about the economics of Qcrack ;-)

One other question...what kind of precidence does this set for a game like Arkanoid? I know there are litteraly hundreds of clones like Breakout and SuperBreakout on the market. I can't remember specifically which came first - but you get the gist.

Oh well, i suppose this is a sad day for owners of the TI-82


FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network

This is a TERRIBLE Precedent

[Mathonwy]

The problem with this kind of ruling is that it is extremely vague for what constitutes a "Direct clone". For example, suppose I played asteroids, loved the game, and decided to make a similar game. Suppose I then make asteroids, but instead of starting with 2 asteroids, I start with 3. Or give your ship a grenade launcher. Or add asteroid bases hidden inside some asteroids. Or whatever other improvements over the original I think are necessary. Under this decision (Which is thankfully a settlement and not a ruling) I might still be in legal trouble. After all, how far do you have to go from the original game to be safe? How do you even MEASURE such distance? Obviously changing the title is not enough. Minor changes are not enough... If interpreted liberally enough, you could even argue hasbro now owns the entire genera. Imagine if CAPCOM tried to argue this way, and said that Mortal Kombat, Dead or Alive, Tekken, King of Fighters, whatever... ... were all in violation of being variations on their original Street Fighter game? Or Nintendo demanding that all side-scrolling platform games cease production, as they are clearly very similar to the original Super Mario Brothers? These is probably a bit less likely to happen, since those games have been out for a while, and the companies owning them are quite a bit better able to defend themselves. But think for a moment, how far removed are these (absurd) cases from the Hasbro case?

There actually have been cases similar to this before. Lotus, when they came out with Lotus1-2-3 had a very nice menu system, composed of heiarchical menus. When other companies said "woah, good idea" lotus tried to sue them for incorperating "lotus-like menus". Fortunatly Lotus lost, or the suit was dropped or something. (I forget which)

The thing that worries me about this decision is that it mirrors other very disturbing events a little too closely for my taste. Consider the similarities between this and the DeCSS trial: DeCSS has NOTHING stolen from anything copyrighted, it was an entirely original work. It functioned as a "black box", where given the same input, it would produce the same output as the DVD hardware. It was basically an emulator. The companies that Hasbro was going after had produced games that were also entirely original works; they shared no code with the hasbro originals. They just looked fairly similar, and had similar play styles.

A couple of years ago, judging from other precedents, Hasbro's case would have been tossed out. The siding of courts against vague, poorly defined "imitation" demonstrates a swing in the pendulum that I don't like.

Webfoot's Response

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm one of the owners of Webfoot Technologies, a company that was sued by Hasbro. For the past 6 months we've had to sit back quietly (advise of our attorneys) and keep quiet. I'd like to clear up some facts and offer some opinions. 1. Our games were made BEFORE Hasbro was in the software business. 2. Our games are not clones. 3. We did not admit to any copyright violation. This was not part of the settlement. 4. The settlement offer was too good for us to refuse. 5. We did not agree to any future restrictions on the types of games we may make. Our games were made 2 years BEFORE Hasbro's retro games. That's right. Hasbro wasn't even in the software business when we made our games! It looks like some large publishers may have saw all us retro fans finding a market, and decided to join in after we had tested out the market. I really don't know... all I know is that Webfoot was making retro games long before Hasbro purchased Atari. Webfoot has been making retro games since 1994, shortly after Atari announced it was abandoning retro. We made the games because we love these games, we grew up with them, and none of the big guys were making them at that time. It's specifically because the big companies had abandoned retro that we wanted to see more games made. Our games are anything but direct clones or rip-offs. I invite anyone to check out our games and see just how close they are to the Atari properties. Our games are so incredibly different, we are puzzled as to why we were sued while makers of exact clones still continue to sell their cloned games in stores. Here are links to a couple of the games involved in the lawsuit: http://www.webfootgames.com/catalog/3dgeo.htm http://www.webfootgames.com/catalog/3dfrog.htm If you just look at the screen-shots, you'll be puzzled as to why we were sued for copyright violation. The game play rules are different and massively expanded beyond any 20 year-old retro game. All the game art, levels, music, and sounds are original. Copyright laws do not protect basic ideas. They protect the unique expression of a work (the graphics, the program code, the sounds, the levels), but not the underlying game idea. Patent law would protect gameplay rules, but no patents are owned with respect to these games. If a patent had existed, it would have expired by now. But copyrights do not protect these ideas, and to this day we strongly believe no copyrights were violated in this case. Also, the names of the games do not belong to the developers. The titles are registered trademarks of eGames and the other publishers. That's why the trademark issues did not effect Webfoot. Our attorneys were baffled that we were being accused of copyright violation, since our games in most people's opinions who actually see them, clearly do not seem to infringe on any Hasbro copyrights (or 20 year old Atari properties). In fact, through the settlement agreement Webfoot does not admit any copyright violation took place. We absolutely refused to sign such a settlement agreement because we firmly believe that our games do not infringe. In fact, at one point Webfoot and MVP Software had dropped out of settlement talks specifically over this matter. We were comfortable litigating this matter, all the way to trial if necessary. We also refused to sign anything that would limit our ability to make any kind of game in the future. Most of the settlement text is public information. I encourage everyone to look at the settlement text and you'll see that it really wasn't a "win" for anyone, but a painful compromise for all parties involved, as is the nature of settlements. So why did we settle? Because we were offered with a settlement that was just too good to turn down. These games were almost 3 years old and were being removed from the stores with or without Hasbro's help. We were willing to fight for a matter of principle, but the last settlement offer was too good. No one gets rich making retro games (I wish someone had warned Hasbro about this in 1997). You do it for the love of gaming. Some people like FPS, some people like RPG, and some of us like retro. It's really just a matter of taste. I would ask that anyone posting opinions please take a look at the games before posting. It seems sometimes that corporations who are able to spend the most money spreading their propaganda are able to spread information that isn't factual. Please look at the games and look at the facts. Don't be fooled by expensive propaganda. Ask yourself why the games that are exact clones are still being sold in stores today? The answer may be that there is an intense turf-war going on between eGames and Hasbro over the drug-store market. It seems eGames has achieved a position as the sole distributor to many drug-store chains, including Rite-Aid and Walgreens. In fact, the CEO of eGames told me personally that the lawsuit was filed just days after a direct confrontation with Hasbro over the drug-store arena. Had this been a stunning victory for Hasbro, then eGames would have been forced out of business, all the defendants would have admitted to copyright violation, and massive restrictions would have been placed on us all. None of these things happened. In fact, the lawsuit is not over. Andre LeMoth of Xtreme Games will continue to litigate this case until the end. We wish him luck and a little more, since we're donating to his legal defense fund (www.xgames3d.com). I'd like to thank the development community for their incredible support. We were very surprised by the alliance created by this lawsuit! It certainly helped us get through a very difficult time knowing so many were offering their help and support. I wish all those great independent developers out there the best of luck, and for those of you who love retro gaming, let's hope it will always be our decision as to which products we wish to play. Dana Dominiak, President Webfoot Technologies, Inc.

What about non-PC games

[Mike1024]

Hey,

I'm getting the rights to Solitaire. Then I'll bribe^H^H^H^H^Hlobby the US government to place a 100% tax on playing cards, in case they are used to play Solitaire, which I have the rights to. I will also demand Microsoft pay my 100% of the profits they made from Windows 95 sales - card games are all it's good for.

Michael

...another comment from Michael Tandy.