Some people tend to believe in conspiracy theories and their own genius (and uniqueness). Sometimes this leads to high-profile stories, like the one that played out on Medium.
Independent developer Matt Akins wrote a heartbreaking story on a media portal about how he developed the game, sent it to publishers, and they first refused to release it, and then published a clone of it, but, attention, not under their own brand.
However, as it turned out, Matt, by the way, still has not released his debut project, hastened to accuse.
Background
Last year Matt developed the game Rotable – a single version of Pong. Realizing that the game would not work without marketing, he decided to write Ketchapp, knowing that they just specialize in minimalistic games.
The publishers replied that they had played with the project, but they did not like it, so they were not going to publish it.
It would seem to be the end of the story, but in December Matt discovers the Circle Pong! game in the App Store, similar in mechanics to Rotable. The publisher of the game was the App Cow company. Based on the fact that the style, control scheme and scoring method of Circle Pong! identical to that of Rotable, our hero concluded that his project had been stolen. And the culprit, surprise, Matt exposes Ketchapp, they say, App Cow is just a shell company.
In his opinion, the fact that in Circle Pong! It uses content (iconography, sounds, style) from Ketchapp games.
Matt believes that the similarity of the Circle (Ketchapp) and Circle Pong! (App Cow) graphics indicates the kinship of the companies.But really?
In fact, Matt, of course, pulled the blanket over himself. There is too much to say in favor of this. And it’s not just that App Cow just constantly clones Ketchapp games, which, of course, is not evidence of a connection between the two companies, which, by the way, both publishers disavowed in an interview with TouchArcade.
It’s enough that Matt wrote his letter to Ketchapp on October 31. In turn, Circle Pong! It appeared on Google Play on August 13, and on the App Store on October 7. Another good argument for the failure of the charges?
No, Matt thinks.
He claims that the publishers have replaced a completely different application published earlier with a clone of Rotable. According to his version, until November 19, Circle Pong! it was a completely different game.
Considering how openly developers clone projects from each other today, such a statement seems completely devoid of common sense. And it has nothing to do with the real state of affairs.
The fact is that Circle Pong! indeed, it is a clone, only not Rotable, which until now, apart from the developer, almost no one has seen, but Pongo Pongo, published on Google Play by Alexander Naszko back in March 2014. Ilias Hassani, the author of Circle Pong!, who sold her App Cow, insists on this.
The main characters
The funny thing is that even this does not convince Matt that the idea of the game was stolen from him, because the size of the circle on the playing field and the type of scoring in Circle Pong!
it reminds him very much of the one in Rotable.
In fact, of course, this whole story is not worth a damn. But it is an excellent demonstration of the “downside” of minimalistic games based on one mechanic.
Most likely, no one stole anything from anyone. Just ideas – they are like that, floating in the air. And given the fashion trends (a certain style in the image, in typography, in the UI), the appearance of unrelated projects of the same type was just a matter of time.
The problem is that, unfortunately, not everyone understands this. And to start shouting about “theft”, accusing someone without really understanding the problem is not very nice. On the other hand, Matt definitely drew attention to himself and his game.