The White House’s penchant for using video games to peddle hate has largely been met with silence or inaction in the video game industry, even when it involves companies that are notoriously litigious about their intellectual property. Tetris, it seems, may be a rare exception to this disappointing trend.
On Thursday, the White House published a series of arcade games themed around the Trump administration’s bigoted political agenda. Among other things, the games encouraged players to digitally build an immigration wall with Tetris blocks and arrest virtual people of color depicted crossing the border. Most of the games were simple knockoffs of classics like Flappy Bird and Snake. Marketing around the digital initiative made more blatant references to specific brands, such as the Nintendo GameCube logo.
Though the games aren’t particularly good, they’re extremely visible and hateful. More critically, the White House arcade games are potentially fertile ground for copyright infringement cases.
One day after White House social media accounts shared the games, the company behind Tetris issued a response. On Instagram, the Tetris account said that the brand believed “in the power of connection and bringing people together, not dividing them.” A follow-up reply to the post, also authored by the brand, clarified that the company was not involved in the creation of the controversial game.
“We take copyright infringement very seriously,” the Tetris Company added.
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