>macbeth@xxxxxxxxxxx (Robin Harbron) wrote:
>>This Tetris company may be for real.
It IS real as far as I can tell.
>>>From what I know, the author of Tetris just received permission/rights
>>/whatever in the last year or so (more than 10 years after he originally
>>made it) to make money from Tetris. I suppose this has something to do
>>with being Russian.
Actually, it has to do with the fact that he was working for a government
institution and is not allowed to profit since Tetris was developed there
and profits would be essentially moonlighting, i.e. "illegal".
>>Very likely, most of the money that was to be made from Tetris has
>>already been made, so he's had to resort to making money "retro-
>>actively", so to speak - with lawsuits, etc.
Seeing as there are new versions of Tetris for Color Game Boy, Playstation,
Nintendo 64 AND Dreamcast, it would appear that not ALL of the money has
been made.
Lord Spambraticus <satanus@xxxxxxxxx> added:
>I do find it very hard to believe those russians didn't make some money out
>of it, however, as I can recall seeing some strange (c) names on the first
>versions of the games way back when.
I believe that was Elorg, the organization Alexey Pajitnov worked for. THEY
were allowed to profit, but by their rules Alexey could not, at least not
directly. I believe the president of BPS (Bill Harris? can't think of the
name right now) did manage to remunerate Alexey in other ways. I seem to
recall some history in "Game Over" by David Sheff about the whole Tetris
thing.
I can think of four versions that affect us: Edtris, Tetris 2600 for 2600;
Kevtris for Colecovision and Vectris for Vectrex. I would think that given
the non-profit nature of all of them, and the fact that they were done by
hobbyists before The Tetris Company was even formed and started cracking
down, would go over well enough in court (and if anyone ever does get in
trouble for them, call me as a character/expert witness, fer chrissakes).
The worst that could happen, I should think, is that these games could no
longer be distributed, which the net would route around anyway.
//*================================================================++
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|| 847-952-9729 slapdash@xxxxxxxxxxxx VIDEOGAME COLLECTOR! ||
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