More C&Ds Fly, Breakout Games Targeted

by Eric March on September 21, 2008 at 5:57 am

Oh, Atari, how the mighty have fallen. From Bushnell to Warner, things were awesome — at least until the Great Crash of ‘83/84. After that, Atari never seemed to recover. Jack Tramiel took it over in ‘84 and the company chugged along, tarnished but surviving. Then he retired and handed the reins to his sons, Gary, Leonard and Sam, and things started going downhill. By 1995, Atari was on the ropes. Then the Jaguar, their last, best hope, lost out to Sony and Nintendo, Atari reverse-merged with mass storage magnate Jugi Tandon (formerly of Tandon Corporation) and his company JTS Corporation, who then filed for Chapter 11 when it turned out nobody remembered Jugi and didn’t want his hard drives. Hasbro picked up Atari’s charred remnants in 1997 for a laughable $5 mil, formed their ill-fated software division Hasbro Interactive, and curled out some lame 3D retreads of Atari classics. That didn’t go over well, so they cut their losses and sold the brand to French gaming veterans Infogrames, who turned it into a brand under which to publish games, ultimately assuming the Atari name wholesale.

Now, to add insult to injury, Atari are chasing after just about anyone who wrote and released a Pong-type game in the App Store, sending the developers cease & desist orders, demanding that they remove their apps and stop selling them altogether. However, the breakout-style games in the App Store owe much more to the likes of Arkanoid, though, what with sporting bonus powerups and the like. (Where was Atari when Taito released that, huh?)

Nevertheless, that doesn’t seem to matter to Atari as they try and bully their way around the App Store, burning a path as they make room for their own originals. Currently, BreakClassic, BreakTouch 3D and Super Pong 2 are prime targets. (And just why the hell aren’t they going for Jirbo Break, huh? Oh yeah, because Jirbo is a bigger company and has the money and legal counsel to fight C&D orders.)

Frankly, I was pretty non-committal about Atari nee Infogrames. They’ve tried to pull some dirty tricks in the past (such as issuing a C&D to former website Atari Labs, which ultimately the webmaster fought because Atari Labs was never a real division of Atari and therefore its name wasn’t trademarked; Infogrames actually backed down but demanded he not use any of Atari’s logos or properties) but this is really taking the take. I’m pretty disappointed in Atari and think their scorched earth policy stinks like week-old fish. I for one will not be supporting Atari in their efforts and will not buy anything they have to offer. Bugger ‘em.

(via Gizmodo)