Mixed up the apps a bit, there is a strong accusation of Candy Crush being a clone of another game named Candy Swipe. In that case they are trying strong arm the guy out of the way despite his strong claims. Just yet more crappy behavior from a modern day bully.
Try downloading Candy Swipe. Yeah it came first, but the game isn't nearly as good - the graphics are stagnant, the objectives are unclear, and the game itself is just boring. Not to mention both games are just derivatives of a thousand other tile matching games that have existed since the NES days.
Game mechanics are not trademarkable, and its a huge benefit for the entire industry. Studios steal from eachother and make incremental improvements, which means a lot more variety in genres, more choices for consumers, and a greater commitment to quality. Still, big studios try to weasel their way into exclusivity through trademarks.
I say don't hate on King.com for their past actions, reprimand them for trying to change the rules of the game once they reached the top of the hill.
As I have not played either game, I was not commenting on the game mechanics. I was referring to the fact that two similar games may not necessarily be allowed to have similar names if one were trademarked, which is the mostly the focus of the guy's complaint. Considering King's reaction to his complaint, I would say that King actually supports his claim but are using a clever method to get around it to use his own claim against him.
I agree that there's not much to be done, and should not be done, about copying a game's mechanics and attempting to improve upon them. But part of the accusations are cloning art assets which can have consequences up to a certain point. I think a combination of cloning art assets in accordance with their respective game mechanics should be an issue in this case, whether the law supports this notion I have no idea.
It's not a copy of Candy Swipe, though. The Candy Swipe creator has been painting a really bad picture of King, but if you actually download and play both apps, you'll see they're completely different games. Even the supposed copying of the graphics and colors that the Candy Swipe dev blogged about didn't really happen. Each app uses the primary colors. That's it.
Keep in mind that King purchased an app created before this guy's was released and responded using his own complaint against him. It would seem that gives some credence to the guy's original complaint.
Candy crush is a match-3 game like bejeweled, while candyswipe is a "draw an unbroken path on similar things" game. The game play is a different mechanism. Though the graphical and stylistic similarities are there, I'd hardly call it a clone.
(not that I'm defending King in their douchebag tactics)
Exactly. The Candyswipe dev has been pretty successful at promoting his story. But in reality, the games (1) have nearly nothing in common, and (2) are both highlyu derivative of other, older games.
- The creator does exactly the same thing than most people accused King.com of doing: Ie. blocking someone's trademark application because they both have the same word in it (here "Candy").
- They both have a blue "circle" as an icon (I'm sorry, but the others one have nothing in common except they are all candies, somehow)
- The games have very little in common mechanically. CandySwipe is about selecting multiple adjacent candies while Candy Crush is about permuting multiple candies so you can make combos.
Because, yes, these games have really nothing in common, except they are about candies. If anything, the only one who could have something of a claim is Bejeweled's creator, Pop-Cap.
If anything, Albert Ransom (who got quite the name here), only got what he was asking for when King bought Candy Crusher and so had a legitimate response, since Candy Crusher is older than CandySwipe.
King.com is certainly not a saint, but Ransom is just freeriding here because he got a good story.
