Atari is using legal threats to stop indies from creating titles inspired by their classic arcade games, according to Black Powder Media programmer Peter Hirschberg. Using funding from Kickstarter, Hirschberg has been making Vector Tanks 3, a title inspired by Atari’s Battlezone. Atari recently decided to step in and shut down the project entirely.
“Anything that has even a passing resemblance to an Atari classic has been issued a copyright infringement claim. So – thanks to their special relationship with Apple – Atari has successfully scrubbed the app store of their perceived competition. It looks as though Apple complied without so much as a rebuttal or independent evaluation,” said Black Powder Media in a statement.
“The cruel irony here is that I tried for years to get ahold of Atari to license their IP but they seemed to have fallen off the planet. Now this. It’s very depressing,” Hirschberg told VentureBeat.
Battlezone, is that you?
Black Powder has pulled previous Vector Tanks titles and has retooled Vector Tanks 3 as The Visceral Adventures of Vic Vector.
“In our storyboards, agile and deadly hovercraft and air based attackers had already replaced the slow moving tanks of vintage earth wars. Vic Vector truly is a ‘new classic’ that cannot fall under the Atari claw,” said Black Powder Media.
Atari has been expanding in the mobile market with its library of classics recently, adding significant micro-transactions to each release. This legal action could be the first in many, as a number of titles on the Apple App Store and Android Market bear more than a passing resemblance to Atari classics.
