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Comment by skymt | Hacker News Reader

I'm a little sympathetic to King here because of the degree to which other developers have ripped off Candy Crush. A couple minutes searching the app store for "candy" turned up five examples ranging from "strongly based on" to "deliberately sowing confusion." One describes itself as a "popular candy 'match 3' game," another even uses the distinctive Candy Crush UI font.

But of course they throw away any sympathy by going after totally unrelated games. Did any player actually think they had downloaded a Candy Crush slot game?

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Why are you sympathetic?

Candy Crush/Farm Heroes = Bejewelled, Papa Pear = Peggle, Bubble Witch = Puzzle Bobble to name a few. No doubt there will be loads of dupes, in the same way that people tried to emulate XXXX-Ville's success.

As people mention the way King got popular is the level of polish in their games and the use of new/innovative takes on very popular titles.

The video games industry thrives on plagiarism. Almost laughable given how much they harp on about piracy.

Isn't Candy Crush just a rip off of Bejeweled though?

It's very similar, though there are some significant gameplay differences. But from a visual perspective, compare Bejeweled[0] and Candy Crush[1], then look at Action Candy Swap HD Pro[2].

[0]: http://appshopper.com/games/bejeweled

[1]: http://appshopper.com/games/candy-crush-saga-%C2%AE

[2]: http://appshopper.com/games/action-candy-swap-hd-pro

It's very similar? ... Let's be honest here ...

That third link is incredible; they've made a cottage industry out of match-3 clones. Not only Action Candy Swap, but Action Candy Shift, Action Jewel Matching, and Amazing Fruit Shift -- all of which seem to be clones of the same game with different sprites and verbiage.

I imagine the business model is the repackage the same thing under as many search term combinations as they can think that people would try to find a game like this. In food terms, like a restaurant advertising the same thing as, "BBQ," "Smoked Meat," "Southern Grill Food," "St. Louis Pork," "Tailgate Plate," etc. It's just pushing SEO into the actual name of the game.

This is partly Apple faults. They only allow you 100 letters for keywords, they no longer index the description, and they provide no feedback on what users used to find your app. So they give you no information that you could use to limit your searches.

There are a number of workaround for this, and one is to upload the same game with slightly different title until you hit on the magic combination that gets you sales. It sucks to have worked hard on a game, and it fails because of the wrong combination of title and keywords.

> It's just pushing SEO into the actual name of the game.

I agree that that's likely the main idea, but there's real value in providing different themes. I like jewels more than I like candy art.

Who searches for games based on the thematic metaphor? I think it's more likely that people search for Bejeweled or Candy Crush, and unscrupulous and uncreative game creators want to muddy the waters and siphon off some of that money.

Candy Crush may have different sprites from Bejeweled, but they play exactly the same. Special matches even give the exact same special powers in Candy Crush... I think they deserve the "candy swap" ripoff. They just got what they did themselves. And it's worse that they also made Papa Pear which copies Peggle (also made by PopCap, creators of Bejeweled)

Bejeweled itself wasn't very original. Game industry has a whole category for those: “Match 3”. CC and Bjw were close within that group, but not enough not to argue that the minor differences where not par for the widespread :cough: ‘hommage’ standard of the industry.

Trade mark has the benefit of addressing names, i.e. word search in the App store.

After playing a number of King games recently, they are all 'reimaginings' of old classics. Candy Crush is a little more original in terms of additional difficulties, but some of them are basically lifted wholesale. The originality from King is the polish and the art, not the gameplay.

that's why I don't think what they do really matters. This is the next Zynga. You could tell that Zynga wasn't legitimate from a thousand miles away.

People that clone games lose. Always. They don't know what to do when there's nothing more to clone.

That's a weird argument. Bejeweled and Peggle (two VERY polished games, both made by PopCap games) were blatantly ripped off. (Candy Crush and Papa Pear by King are almost identical ripoffs, save for sprites).

How are the games by PopCap not polished? It irritates me even more that King copies TWO games from the same company... They truly are the new Zynga.

Bejeweled is a polished version of an earlier game. Peggle's graphics aren't exactly polished for a 2007 game. But I guess I really meant that King's strength is their polish. It's certainly not their game design originality.

Same tactic as Zynga. Still working apparently.

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