King CEO Riccardo Zacconi has posted an open letter to the company’s website, regarding the company’s recent attempt to trademark the word “candy” and for allegedly cloning another developer’s game.
“The debate here revolves around Pac-Avoid, a game coded by a third-party on our behalf nearly five years ago,” the letter reads, in part. “The game strongly resembles another game called ScamperGhost. The details of the situation are complex, but the bottom line is that we should never have published Pac-Avoid. We have taken the game down from our site, and we apologise for having published it in the first place.”
Zacconi also refers to the situation as an exception to the rule. “King does not clone games, and we do not want anyone cloning our games.”
He also defended King’s recent application to trademark the word “Candy” saying that there is nothing unusual about trademarking a common word for specific uses. “Think of “Time”, “Money” “Fortune”, “Apple”, and “Sun”, to name a few. We are not trying to control the world’s use of the word “Candy;” having a trade mark doesn’t allow us to do that anyway. We’re just trying to prevent others from creating games that unfairly capitalise on our success.”
Zacconi then reiterated a previous statement the company made regarding Stoic’s The Banner Saga. Stating that King does not believe Stoic is trying to capitalize on the “Saga” name, but it needed to oppose Stoic’s trademark application “Otherwise, it would be much easier for future copycats to argue that use of the word “Saga” when related to games, was fair play.”
(via Polygon)