Atari launches legal assault on iOS devs

Black Powder Media, the producer of iOS title Vector Tanks 3, has claimed that Atari has issued a number of copyright infringement claims against games that resemble anything from Atari’s back catalogue.

Vector Tanks 3 is in itself a derivative of Atari’s 1980 arcade title Battlezone.

Thanks to their special relationship with Apple Atari has successfully scrubbed the app store of their perceived competition,” Black power told VentureBeat. It looks as though Apple complied without so much as a rebuttal or independent evaluation.”

A programmer of the game added: The cruel irony here is that I tried for years to get hold of Atari to license their IP but they seemed to have fallen off the planet. Now this. It’s very depressing.”

Black Powder has said that it intends to re-work the title so as to differentiate it from Battlezone for a re-release.