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Comment by vacri | Hacker News Reader

Looking at the game link for Templar Assault, it's a pretty clear violation of Games Workshop's IP. The art looks exactly like Space Marine Terminators; the character names are evocative of the same as well, along with a passel of other very close imitation.

I don't have a horse in this race either way, but as a pretty flagrant violation of IP, perhaps this is why they've drawn fire from Google? Games Workshop is usually pretty assiduous in protecting their IP.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tresebroth...

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The gameplay screens look a lot like Space Hulk.

Though I'm not sure I agree with banning such clones, after all game mechanics can be neither copyrighted nor patented.

It's not the gameplay mechanics that raise a flag for me.

It's the art. Compare the screenshots of the various units to this:

http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/File:Ultramarine_terminat...

Have you heard of Starcraft?

Aside from the(admittedly very close) similarities between the Zerg and Tyranids, there's not that much that Blizzard copied from GW's IP.

However, it's telling that GW's notoriously trigger happy lawyers have left Blizzard alone, so it's pretty much a non-comparison.

I'm not sure what you're getting at exactly but it is well known that Blizzard's titles were directly inspired by the Warhammer and Warhammer 40k universes[1].

While the visual similarities haven't causes Games Workshop to complain about infringement from Blizzard (as far as I know) it doesn't mean that Games Workshop isn't complaining about infringement in this or other cases.

[1] http://kotaku.com/5929157/the-making-of-warcraft-part-1

Clones are part and parcel of the gaming world, but folks still need to change their IP.

From the look of the UI, it even has a time countdown slider for each turn, something fairly unique to Space Hulk. I kinda miss that, it really made Space Hulk tense. Still, it's a 20-year-old game, probably time for a remake somewhere :)

The latest version is not 20 years old... it was on 3D0 in 1995 if I remember correctly. So 17 years old :)

If that's the case then Google should indicate that in their emails instead of sending generic warning emails. Even specifying that it's a copyright violation will help instead of beating around the bush and causing anxiety.

Have you considered that perhaps there are reasons for sending generic warning emails that you either haven't thought of or are undervaluing?

If developers don't know these reasons, it might as well be a black box oracle, huffing fumes, rolling dice, and sending out warnings based on the results.

So... no?

Downvoted you by accident! Sorry!

No worries. I really wish HN would give you a grace period in which you can reverse that. :/

Either way, it seems that Google has dropped the ball in terms of good communication.

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