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The article's update provides the reason: > Last year, The Tetris Company, Inc. and N3TWORK announced a multi-year agreement where N3TWORK will be the exclusiv

The article's update provides the reason: > Last year, The Tetris Company, Inc. and N3TWORK announced a multi-year agreement where N3TWORK will be the exclusive developer and publisher of new Tetris® games for mobile devices worldwide, excluding China. EA’s announcement that it will retire its Tetris®, Tetris® Premium and Tetris® Blitz games as of April 21 is a result of this agreement. Kind of surprising they don't have recourse to rebrand/retool the game.

0xcde4c3db 7y ago
TTC somehow got a court ruling saying that their copyright on Tetris covers the actual game mechanics [1], so that might be legally risky. [1] https://www.loeb.com/en/insights/publications/2012/06/tetris-holding-llc-v-xio-interactive-inc https://www.loeb.com/en/insights/publications/2012/06/tetris...
- ta999999171 7y ago
  Totally unrelated, Blockinger on F-Droid is dope!
- michaelbrave 7y ago
  strange I didn't think you could copyright mechanics...
  - simonlc 7y ago
    You can't. The whole case rests on trade dress, a form of trademark. They clearly know what they are doing in court, with past episodes being on Nintendo's side in the past. Xio also had a terrible defense, and imo their expert witness falling flat. The evidence presented was also skewed imho, it drives me nuts every time I think about it. I should note that it is possible to patent game mechanics, and there are various patents owned by them, and also other developers of Tetris games. None of these cover the core mechanics of Tetris however.
    - tinus_hn 7y ago
      Any parent on Tetris would have long expired, Tetris was published in 1984.
  - 0xcde4c3db 7y ago
    As far as I know, the general consensus is that you can't, but I've seen this case mentioned in several places as implying that maybe you can. I (not a lawyer, just to be clear) find this case a bit confusing because there are several places where the court seems to conflate mechanics with their presentation/rendering. After reading about it again/more, I think it might be that people are reading a specific line of reasoning about merger doctrine as applying to copyrightability in general, when it's actually only addressing one part of the overall question of copyrightability and is still accepting that mechanics can't be copyrighted per se because they're functional. But this is still an impression and not something I can rigorously argue at this point, so be sure to consult your lawyer before writing a Tetris clone, I guess.
bnegreve 7y ago
But it was only possible because EA can terminate their service anytime with a 30 days notice [1]. What if they had not added this in their TOS? Can N3TWORK force EA to break their TOS? [1] from the article: > But buried deep in the games’ terms of service, EA has made it clear that the company only has to give notice 30 days before terminating one of its services.
- dmurray 7y ago
  How it would have happened if that clause wasn't there: someone could sue them for breach of contract, claiming they had agreed to provide the service indefinitely. It could get litigated and a judge would decide whether they had made that promise. And they could be found to be at fault and forced to pay some damages, even though the contract was one they weren't legally entitled to fulfil because they didn't have a perpetual license to the IP. Or they could settle out of court, fearing that the judge would rule against them. IANAL but in most jurisdictions I expect EA would not have lost the case and most likely no one would have taken the case. The TOS avoids the risk, though.
  - mlyle 7y ago
    The big issue here is whether one can reasonably think that "using an app that I bought in an app store" offline requires the app developer to provide a service. Long ago, we'd buy video games, and the multiplayer servers might eventually go offline--- but the single player modes were offline. Now, for nearly no technical or gameplay reason, we have games that require connecting home for singleplayer, in turn allowing game publishers to arbitrarily yank the rights to the game. Massive EULA aside, what does "purchase" mean anymore, and do customers have a reasonable understanding of what transaction they're entering?
simonlc 7y ago
I think they worded it badly. I'll spare you the very litigious and long history Tetris has had with licensing, and talk about how EA got the license to make a mobile Tetris game. 1. Henk Rogers creates a company called Blue Lava Wireless, and his other company Blue Planet Software gives them the right to make a few Tetris games. 2. JAMDAT, a publisher of mobile games buys Blue Lava Wireless, and also acquires a 15 year exclusive license to publish mobile Tetris games. 3. EA buys JAMDAT later in the year, along with that license. Can you guess the date JAMDAT bought BLW? April 20, 2005. The Tetris Company is very protective of their brand, as they should be. They make a crap load of money from licensing it to publishers, and having exclusivity just ramps up that price. 3 days ago all of EA's Tetris games were delisted from App Stores, while some may have assumed the games would have remained up at least until April 21st. My theory is BPS and N3TWORK saw this as an issue, no Tetris on the App Store, and needed to answer to it, so they paid EA to delist early, and released their barebones Tetris game. N3TWORK (who BPS has invested in) also has another upcoming Tetris title called Tetris Royale. It's already available for the New Zealand region, but playable anywhere if you're crafty.

0xcde4c3db 7y ago

TTC somehow got a court ruling saying that their copyright on Tetris covers the actual game mechanics [1], so that might be legally risky. [1] https://www.loeb.com/en/insights/publications/2012/06/tetris-holding-llc-v-xio-interactive-inc https://www.loeb.com/en/insights/publications/2012/06/tetris...

ta999999171 7y ago
Totally unrelated, Blockinger on F-Droid is dope!
michaelbrave 7y ago
strange I didn't think you could copyright mechanics...
- simonlc 7y ago
  You can't. The whole case rests on trade dress, a form of trademark. They clearly know what they are doing in court, with past episodes being on Nintendo's side in the past. Xio also had a terrible defense, and imo their expert witness falling flat. The evidence presented was also skewed imho, it drives me nuts every time I think about it. I should note that it is possible to patent game mechanics, and there are various patents owned by them, and also other developers of Tetris games. None of these cover the core mechanics of Tetris however.
  - tinus_hn 7y ago
    Any parent on Tetris would have long expired, Tetris was published in 1984.
- 0xcde4c3db 7y ago
  As far as I know, the general consensus is that you can't, but I've seen this case mentioned in several places as implying that maybe you can. I (not a lawyer, just to be clear) find this case a bit confusing because there are several places where the court seems to conflate mechanics with their presentation/rendering. After reading about it again/more, I think it might be that people are reading a specific line of reasoning about merger doctrine as applying to copyrightability in general, when it's actually only addressing one part of the overall question of copyrightability and is still accepting that mechanics can't be copyrighted per se because they're functional. But this is still an impression and not something I can rigorously argue at this point, so be sure to consult your lawyer before writing a Tetris clone, I guess.

bnegreve 7y ago

But it was only possible because EA can terminate their service anytime with a 30 days notice [1]. What if they had not added this in their TOS? Can N3TWORK force EA to break their TOS? [1] from the article: > But buried deep in the games’ terms of service, EA has made it clear that the company only has to give notice 30 days before terminating one of its services.

dmurray 7y ago
How it would have happened if that clause wasn't there: someone could sue them for breach of contract, claiming they had agreed to provide the service indefinitely. It could get litigated and a judge would decide whether they had made that promise. And they could be found to be at fault and forced to pay some damages, even though the contract was one they weren't legally entitled to fulfil because they didn't have a perpetual license to the IP. Or they could settle out of court, fearing that the judge would rule against them. IANAL but in most jurisdictions I expect EA would not have lost the case and most likely no one would have taken the case. The TOS avoids the risk, though.
- mlyle 7y ago
  The big issue here is whether one can reasonably think that "using an app that I bought in an app store" offline requires the app developer to provide a service. Long ago, we'd buy video games, and the multiplayer servers might eventually go offline--- but the single player modes were offline. Now, for nearly no technical or gameplay reason, we have games that require connecting home for singleplayer, in turn allowing game publishers to arbitrarily yank the rights to the game. Massive EULA aside, what does "purchase" mean anymore, and do customers have a reasonable understanding of what transaction they're entering?

simonlc 7y ago

I think they worded it badly. I'll spare you the very litigious and long history Tetris has had with licensing, and talk about how EA got the license to make a mobile Tetris game. 1. Henk Rogers creates a company called Blue Lava Wireless, and his other company Blue Planet Software gives them the right to make a few Tetris games. 2. JAMDAT, a publisher of mobile games buys Blue Lava Wireless, and also acquires a 15 year exclusive license to publish mobile Tetris games. 3. EA buys JAMDAT later in the year, along with that license. Can you guess the date JAMDAT bought BLW? April 20, 2005. The Tetris Company is very protective of their brand, as they should be. They make a crap load of money from licensing it to publishers, and having exclusivity just ramps up that price. 3 days ago all of EA's Tetris games were delisted from App Stores, while some may have assumed the games would have remained up at least until April 21st. My theory is BPS and N3TWORK saw this as an issue, no Tetris on the App Store, and needed to answer to it, so they paid EA to delist early, and released their barebones Tetris game. N3TWORK (who BPS has invested in) also has another upcoming Tetris title called Tetris Royale. It's already available for the New Zealand region, but playable anywhere if you're crafty.