"It almost killed the company right there and then," Vlambeer's Rami Ismail told Kotaku. Like Donut County, a clone of Ridiculous Fishing called Ninja Fishing appeared in app stores before Ridiculous Fishing itself was finished. Clone warsĭ'Anastasio pointed to Infinite Golf, which resembles Vancouver-based Pirate Games' 2014 hit Desert Golfing, as well as The Fish Master, which plays similarly to Ridiculous Fishing by Vlambeer. "In the case of Donut County and Hole.io, it is possible that the growing hole feature of Donut County is itself so distinctive and original that this feature alone constitutes a substantial part of the original game," he said. He cited a 2013 decision involving a television cartoon, where the Supreme Court of Canada took a "holistic" approach that considered "the cumulative effect of the features copied from the work" in the case.
"But what if the game is not literally a copy, but simply uses a feature or combination of features of the original game?" "It's easy enough to spot literal copying – the copy or elements of the copy are exactly the same as the original," Mark Edwards, an Ontario-based lawyer with expertise in digital and traditional entertainment industries, told Day 6. Games reporter Cecilia D'Anastasio says independent game developers rarely have the time and money required to take another company that they believe copied their games to court. The fine line lies in the distinction between a game that's merely "inspired by" a previous game, and a game that's an outright copy.
That practice often leads to entire new genres of games growing out of a single game's new idea. Nintendo owns the likeness of Mario, for example, but not the idea of running and jumping on a two-dimensional plane. She explained that game designers and studios have historically used pre-existing ideas or concepts to make new ones all the time. "For instance, Donut County and Hole.io are two games with similar gameplay but with different interpretations that each bring a unique game experience," the statement said.Ĭecilia D'Anastasio, a reporter for the games site Kotaku, characterised the statement as "dripping with slime."ĭ'Anastasio said Voodoo has "put out a number of games that resemble, in pretty significant ways, other indie developers' games as well." (Submitted by Ben Esposito)In a statement, a representative for Voodoo told Day 6 that "our developers, whether internal or external … freely interpret existing gameplays as it is the custom throughout the profession where all developers feed off each other's creations. He plans to release it by the end of 2018. Ben Esposito has been working on his upcoming game, Donut County, for the last 5 years.
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