'CandySwipe' Crushed: When Game Development Turns Nasty

Nerval's Lobster writes "King, the gaming developer behind the monster hit Candy Crush Saga, has attracted a fair amount of criticism over the past few weeks over its attempt to trademark the word 'candy,' which isn't exactly an uncommon term. The company followed up that trademarking attempt by firing off takedown notices at other developers who use 'candy' in the titles of their apps. But things only got emotional in the past few days, when indie developer Albert Ransom published an open letter on his Website that excoriates King for what basically amounts to bullying. Ransom claims that he published CandySwipe in 2010, a full two years before Candy Crush Saga hit the market, and that the two games bear a number of similarities; after opposing King's attempts to register a trademark, Ransom found that his rival had taken things to a whole new level by purchasing the rights to a game called Candy Crusher and using that as leverage to cancel the CandySwipe trademark. Ransom claims he spent three years working on his game, and that King is basically robbing his livelihood. King was not effusive in its response. 'I would direct you to our stance on intellectual property,' a spokesperson for the company wrote in an email to Slashdot, which included a link to a letter posted online by King CEO Riccardo Zacconi. 'At this time, we do not have any comment to add beyond what is outlined in this letter.' Zacconi's various defenses in the letter seem a moot point in the context of CandySwipe, considering how Ransom has already abandoned the prospect of fighting to protect his intellectual property. But the two developers' letters help illustrate how downright nasty the casual-gaming industry has become over the past several quarters, as profits skyrocket and people attempt to capitalize on others' success."

Rate

[WPIDalamar]

Just rated several of king's games 1-star, no idea if that helps, but made me feel better.

Goldmine

[SuperKendall]

Candy Crush has made a TON of money.

Since there's another developer with a similar product and a similar name that shipped well before, you think he would have no end of lawyers offering up services just for a cut of the juicy Candy Mountain they can take a big chunk from.

If one side is going to play the legal angle then have no qualms about doing the same.

One of life's great mysteries

[Tanman]

One of life's great mysteries is how achieving wealth tends to make people more greedy. For example, studies have shown that, as a percentage of income, charitable giving tends to be inversely proportional to income. Here you have a company that has found tremendous success, and in response to that success they become more greedy and try to shut everyone down.

I think human nature is not to just want success. Human nature is to want to win and stomp on the corpses of your competition.

I had this experience with Google

[spiritplumber]

and their Cellbots project -- I scooped them by around six months, and even offer to share my code with them. What I got was a project manager telling me that I was just a hobbyist and my product didn't exist. What he got was me giving him one of my PCBs to him, then closing his hand around it, and asking him if this doesn't exist why is it causing you pain? When they started giving out the Google ADK board at Maker Faire 2011, I made the rounds to give my board to people half an hour before... including to the Google guys. If anyone was at the Bay Area Maker Faire, they probably will remember how the Robots Everywhere Antbot worked, and the Google Cellbot sat there victim of wifi overload. If something's bigger than you, and you want to win, bite the shins and punch the nuts. Only way.

Re:Tango DropBox

[Anonymous Coward]

Good analogy. Another example is of my friend Christiaan Rendle, who was also involved in TangoDropBox.com. He made a game called "AirDrop", Apple came out with a product/service called "AirDrop" and the fight ensued. I'm not privy to the details, but it's still alive as well...

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/airdrop-pro/id363670888?mt=8
http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/mobile/05/03/apple.airdrop/

So everybody here was confused?

[Yakasha]

I do see a lot of hate for King and support for "the little guy". Why? I see two issues with Ransom's claim.

First, honestly when I look at the comparisons, I see no confusion. If King actually cloned Candy Swipe, they did so at such a high level as to not require any litigation. "A game about candy that uses a touch screen." Beyond that, what is the same? The colors are similar... shapes are wildly different. Count of the # of objects is different. The gameplay is different. Candy Crush has far more content. The list goes on.
So I'm curious... who here was actually confused by the games? Who here played Candy Crush for a while before realizing "omg, this isn't Candy Swipe"? I honestly do not believe any readers here were confused.

Second, look at Candy Crusher. Make a little comparison pdf of screenshots between the three games. Any claim Runsome makes on King's game can be done by AIM Productions on Runsome, continuing the chain of trademark confusion back a little further, making Runsome's entire claim bubkis. Runsome "cloned" AIM's Candy Crusher just as much as King "cloned" Candy Swipe.

Just because you lost an argument, doesn't mean you were bullied.