This one hit my radar last week but thanks to the usual delays I’m only now getting to it – apparently, Atari is suing Nestle, the company behind the chocolate-wafer candy bar Kit Kat, over the similarities a commercial from 2016 had with the game.
I can’t find this commercial online, but apparently it used the Kit Kat bar pieces as bricks in what basically would be the game Breakout, something that makes sense and would provide a nice nostalgic kick to anyone familiar with the game (which should be damn near any person who loves classic gaming, right?)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakout_(video_game)
So, this is absolutely stupid, and let me tell you why.
The primary reason is that this would fall under parody. You know, an imitation of something done for comedic effect. In this case, I’d imagine the comedic nature is subtle, but present. The idea is it would remind anyone seeing the commercial of the game, make them smile, maybe laugh because “oh, hey that candy is breakout blocks, funny” and that’s that. It isn’t like they made an actual game that was Breakout but with candy, oh no, it was just a commercial – a non-interactive visual representation of the spirit of the game, but with a damned candy bar!
Let’s not ignore the myriad of clones of the game that have existed for the past 40 years, as well as the other countless times breakout style jokes have been made. Are you going to go back and try to sue over every one of those jokes as well? Are you going to sue Taito over Arkanoid? Are you going to try to go after everyone who grew up in the 90’s playing Brickles Plus on the Macintosh computers at school because they enjoyed a game that basically was Breakout, but not?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakout_clone
Okay I intentionally went a little silly there but I needed a way to bring up the uniquitous nature of the whole thing – it’s kind of crazy. No, not kind of… It’s totally crazy. Insane.
Let’s also not forget, just for the sake of it, that the Atari that exists today is Atari in name only – yeah, they hold legal rights to many things, but Atari is basically a sub-brand of Infogrames at this stage… I think, it’s actually a complex as fuck history.
Anyway, I feel if this holds up in court it will fall flat on its face. It’s a pathetic claim, to say the least, and I have to laugh about it.
Original article I learned of this from is here on BBC news – http://www.bbc.com/news/business-40972769. I did want to add in that this article is poorly written, especially for BBC material. Yeah, Jobs and Wozniak ARE Apple computer founders, but that company didn’t exist yet back in 75 or so when they created Breakout. Try harder guys, really.
If I find some new info on this I will come back to it. This is that absolutely idiotic kind of story that’s worth covering on dull news days.
Its been a common belief lately that Atari have been quite desperate to stay relevant especially with that Ataribox they revealed. This sort of action only cements that opinion for me.