MCV/DEVELOP News, events, research and jobs from the games industry
The critically acclaimed freemium game Triple Town has been flagrantly plagiarised by a rival games studio, according to allegations in a copyright infringement suit.
Mobile games group Spry Fox last week launched a lawsuit against casual game studio 6Waves Lolapps, alleging that its latest release – called Yeti Town – is a "blatant copy of Triple Town."
“Sometimes you need to stand up for yourself, or you’re just begging to be taken advantage of,” said Spry Fox CEO David Edery.
The decision to file a complaint was tough, Edery (pictured) said on his personal blog.
“We are not enthusiastic about the prospect of spending our time in court as opposed to making games. And in general, we believe that only in the most extreme circumstances should a video game developer resort to legal action in order to defend their creative works — the last thing our industry needs is frivolous lawsuits,” he claimed.
“Unfortunately, it is our opinion that 6waves has behaved in a reprehensible and illegal manner, and we can not, in good conscience, ignore it.”
At the centre of Edery’s lawsuit are two allegations. The first is a body of material that will be used to argue that
Yeti Town is “a nearly perfect copy of Triple Town”.
The second claim is that 6waves had previously negotiated a publishing deal with Spry Fox for Triple Town, though the deal fell through “on the day Yeti Town was published”.
“We gave 6waves private access to Triple Town when it was still in closed beta, months before the public was exposed to the game,” Edery said.
“We believed those negotiations were ongoing, and we continued to give private information to 6waves, until 6waves’ executive director of business development sent us a message via Facebook on the day Yeti Town was published in which he suddenly broke off negotiations and apologized for the nasty situation. His message can be found in its entirety in the body of our legal complaint.”
6Waves has yet to comment on the matter but there is no suggestion that the company accepts the accusations.
