After having two of its iOS games pulled from the App Store upon request from Atari, Black Powder Media studio accused Atari of paving the way for its own games by taking down hundreds of small studio games.
"Atari appears to be paving the way for a reissuing of their classics by putting the squeeze on hundreds of apps!" Black Powder Media wrote on their KickStarter page. "Anything that has even a passing resemblance to an Atari classic has been issued a copyright infringement claim."
Atari has already released updated versions of Breakout and Asteroids and it is likely that more of its classic titles will follow. Vector Tanks developer, Peter Hirschberg, noted that he tried to get Atari's permission to create a game "inspired by" its Battlezone game, but the company never responded until they sent a copyright violation notice to Apple asking for the game to be removed from the App Store.
Atari didn't deny Black Powder Media's accusations, as they asserted their "need to vigorously protect [their] intellectual property."
"For companies like Atari, our intellectual property portfolio is our most valued asset," Atari said in a statement. "While we have great respect for the indie developer community and greatly appreciate the enthusiasm that they have for our renowned properties, we need to vigorously protect our intellectual property and ensure that it is represented in highly innovative games. We have been actively engaging with numerous established and up and coming developers to help us re-imagine our iconic franchises, and outside app developers have already helped us produce two top 10 mobile game successes in Asteroids: Gunner and Breakout: Boost. We look forward to further developing strong relationships with the indie app development community through additional games that we will be releasing in the future."
