Is Apple Helping Atari Bully Indie iOS Developers?

The news recently broke that Atari was beginning to crack down on indie iOS developers creating games that sometimes only slightly resemble their classic arcade franchises.

As VentureBeat first reported, developers of iOS games like Vector Tanks have received legal threats from Atari, and Apple seems to be complying with Atari’s requests to remove titles from the App Store without independent review.

If you’re unfamiliar with Vector Tanks, it resembles Atari’s 1980 arcade game called Battlezone. As you can see from the images below, both games are made up of the same vector art-style that amounts to little more tanks drawn with fluorescent lines.

Atari has already been successful at getting Vector Tanks removed from the App Store and the developer has sat down with VentureBeat to talk about the experience.

Perhaps not the best defense, but developer Peter Hirschberg says he created the original Vector Tanks game for iPhone in 2009 trying to get Atarti’s attention (presumably to get a job working on Battlezone ports for iOS?):

“I ran up on stage before the big huge popular band starts playing, grabbed the guitar and did a really awesome lick and I was hoping they’d go: Dude, you’re totally in the band now. And instead they kicked me out of the show.”

He then goes on to describe that he purposely tried to avoid copying Battlezone:

“I used to say: They can’t come after me for a game of tanks drawn of lines, because that was the only similarity that I saw. That’s why I put jeeps in there, helicopters and power-ups – it was not supposed to be Battlezone. Every time I found myself steering into Battlezone territory I would purposely turn the other way.” 

Unfortunately, Black Powder Media (who purchased Vector Tanks from Hirschberg) provided the following account of the situation where they claim Atari wanted to make Vector Tanks part of the Battlezone franchise:

“On Oct. 26, 2011, Apple contacted us to let us know Atari claims infringement. We responded to Apple, denying any infringement and told them we’d be in touch with Atari. We then called Nolan Bushnell who suggested we make Vector Tanks an official Battlezone title and then put us in touch with Atari.”

The problem here isn’t that Atari has requested an app they believe is infringing on their IP be removed, it’s that Apple has removed it without an official ruling or independent review. As Black Powder Media’s Scott Barrett puts it, “I rather doubt if a little publisher drafted an infringement claim to Apple about one of Atari’s games that Apple would pull the title without the indie dev providing an official legal ruling.”

If Atari plans on making this a new strategy of theirs, they can start with the hundreds of Asteroids clones already in the App Store. However, if more large developers and game publishers start cracking down on indie developers that aren’t allowed to dispute their claims, Apple might have to implement a method of resolving these types of issues.

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