trademark was approved, Benjamin Hsu, creator of “All Candy Casino Slots,” received a cease-and-desist notice from Apple’s legal department asking him to pull his game from the app store. King’s efforts to protect their trademark have not been idle. The United States Patent and Trademark Office approved a similar trademark registration on Jan.

Perhaps spurred by the realization of their own personal experience, King Games has taken measures to protect its intellectual property, to the extent that they have actually trademarked the words “candy” and “saga.” In 2012, King filed a trademark for the words “candy” and “saga” with the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market, the agency responsible for international trademark protection in the European Union. Much of the profit made from the game comes from subtly manipulative monetization models that involve in-app purchases, according to Gamasutra. In spite of being a free-to-play app, “Candy Crush Saga” alone makes daily revenue of just under $1,000,000, according to Think Gaming, and as of press time it is the second highest grossing free app. The minimal effort required to make knockoff games such as these has proven to be a lucrative enterprise for King Games. Many of their most popular titles, such as “Bubble Witch Saga” and “Papa Pear Saga,” are similarly identical to other titles–Taito’s “Bust-A-Move” and Pop Cap’s “Peggle,” respectively. This isn’t a recent phenomenon and it certainly isn’t new to King Games. Also, in spite of its aesthetic and barring maybe one or two gameplay mechanics, it’s almost a by-the-numbers clone of Pop Cap’s “Bejeweled,” which was released over a decade ago. Blatantly cloning other games, painting a new skin on them, making a fortune in the process, and using that leverage to put the thumbscrews on smaller developers to the extent that you copyright household words is another thing altogether.Įnter King Games Ltd., the British casual games studio responsible for the wildly popular mobile game “Candy Crush Saga.” The game, released in 2012, was listed as the top grossing free app in the iTunes App store for 2013, and according to The Verge and Forbes, it boasts over 500 million downloads across mobile devices and social networking websites like Facebook. It’s almost standard industry practice at this point.

Shields and regenerating health are seen in many modern first-person shooters such the “Halo” series, there is a discernible trend toward open-world sandbox games, so on and so forth. One could make a defensible case arguing that many games in the AAA market contain elements of more successful products and that much of the industry is based on ripping off other people’s ideas.

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