Hasbro, the second largest toy maker company in the world in terms of market and revenue, also has its share of bad news. Recent reports say that Turkish Mobile Developer, Peak Games, has filed a lawsuit against Hasbro and Backflip Games mobile division for copyright infringement. Hasbro allegedly used the similar game design from Peak Games' app, Toy Blast, in their new game, My Little Pony: Puzzle Party.
My Little Pony: Puzzle Party a clone of Toy Blast?
My Little Pony: Puzzle Party was developed by Hasbro's Backflip Studios and was launched Oct.13 while Peak Game's Toy Blast was launched Aug. 2015. In addition, Toy Blast was number 1 in Google Play Store while number 3 for Top Downloads in the iTunes App Store. It currently has a review rating of 4.71 out of 5.
Peak Games filed the copyright infringement lawsuit against Hasbro in the San Francisco U.S. District Court where they had side-by-side image comparisons of their game Toy Blast and Hasbro's My Little Pony: Puzzle Party. The said images illustrated where the screens of the two games were almost identical.
The copyright infringement lawsuit even mentioned that Hasbro followed the exact similar step-by-step process in the tutorial. The only difference, according to Peak Games, was the My Little Pony brand.
Peak Games vs Hasbro
Jennifer Kelly, Fenwick & West partner, represents Peak Games. She said in a statement, "Peak believes it is obligated to protect its teams' creativity and hard work, and to discourage others from taking the shortcut of cloning a leading game in the genre. Under this circumstance, we felt it necessary to take the step of filing this action, which Peak has never done before, and did not do lightly."
The lawsuit against Hasbro also mentioned that My Little Pony: Puzzle Party was just a reskin of Toy Blast. Aside from the copying of Toy Blast's tutorial step-by-step guide, My Little Pony also allegedly cloned the original content, level designs, and even the numerical scores.
In addition, the lawsuit mentioned that Hasbro should have known better since it has already sued others for copyright infringement. Case in point, Hasbro sued Wordscraper, Lexulous, and Scrabulous in 2008 for allegedly copying Scrabble Word Finder.
What do you think about the lawsuit against Hasbro? Do you find the exact similarities between Toy Blast and My Little Pony: Puzzle Party mentioned in the lawsuit? Share your comments below!
