In a landmark case, mobile game developer, Voodoo, has won a court battle against Hero and Rollic Games after it was proven in a French court that the companies had copied key features of its game.
The court battle was centered around two games, Voodoo’s Woodturning 3D, which was released on 20 December 2019 and Rollic’s Wood Shop, on 19 December, which allowed players to carve logs of wood to meet a presented shape.
In its original form, Wood Shop was a more basic version of the two games. Unlike Woodturning 3D, It did not offer carving stencil options, did not present the shape of the object in the log of wood to facilitate the cutting, and did not have a polishing and painting stage.
Rollic and Hero Games released a revised version of Wood Shop on 7 January 2020, with a series of updates, closely linked to all of the original features of Woodturning 3D. This included a new app icon, carving stencils, chisel options, smoothing sponge, paint can, and a results screen.
It was considered that these updates constituted an identical copy of the main features of the game Woodturning 3D. After unsuccessfully filing a takedown notice through Apple to withdraw Wood Shop from the Apple App Store, Voodoo decided to take the case to the French court which ruled in its favour earlier this month.
The French Court ordered Rollic and Hero Games to pay Voodoo €125,000 in economic and reputational damages, as well as remove Wood Shop from the Google and Apple stores.
Alexander Shea, Publishing Manager of Voodoo, commented on the case:
“We welcome the decision from the French court, which supports our view that Rollic updated its game to imitate key features of our popular title, Woodturning 3D. We hope today’s decision will highlight an important message for the mobile gaming industry that copycats are unacceptable.”
In the past there have been other cases again Rollic here is a list of them
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