Tetris knockoff 'Build the Wall' is one of six new games hosted on the White House website, and The Tetris Company is not happy. The Tetris Company wants nothing to do with the White House's new copycat game. Gaming The Tetris Company wants nothing to do with the White House's new copycat game Tetris knockoff 'Build the Wall' is one of six new games hosted on the White House website.
By Ian Carlos Campbell Sept. The game is one of six new arcade titles released by the White House on Thursday and clearly supposed to be a clone of Tetris. "At Tetris we believe in the power of connection and bringing people together," the company's post says.
"To our fans everywhere: we love you, we see you, and we're grateful to have you in our community." In the description of the post on Instagram, The Tetris Company goes on to note that it "was not involved in the creation of Build the Wall " and that it "takes copyright infringement very seriously." Build the Wall tasks players with stacking and slotting falling bricks into a slowly growing wall, not unlike Tetris. The only difference is successfully completing a line of bricks doesn't clear them from the board, and instead the wall only grows larger in the hopes of keeping out an oncoming "zombie horde." If the title wasn't clear enough, the wall's placement near an ill-defined "Southern Border" makes Build the Wall 's anti-immigration stance fairly explicit. Building a wall across the entire US-Mexico border is a policy goal that's shared across President Donald Trump's two terms and still in the works.
When asked The Tetris Company to comment, it reiterated that it wasn't involved in the creation of the game and "did not authorize or license the Tetris brand or intellectual property" for Build the Wall. "For more than 40 years, Tetris has brought people together across generations and cultures through play and joy. The objective of the game has always been to stack with purpose to clear as many lines as possible.
The PR masterminds at the White House just released a series of vaguely policy-themed "arcade" games, some of which are racist – and modeled on real games whose copyright holders may not be too happy to be associated with the MAGA agenda. The Tetris Company has already responded to "Build the Wall," which is obviously [โฆ].
The White House is making arcade games racist. Policy Gaming Politics The White House is making arcade games racist Tetris isnโt happy about it.
Tetris isnโt happy about it. The Tetris Company has already responded to โBuild the Wall,โ which is obviously modeled on the famous puzzle game.
In the Trump administrationโs game, the player has to stack interlocking shapes to stop a โzombie border siegeโ along the southern border. Aliens โ the administrationโs preferred term for noncitizens, and the subject of previous grotesque attempts at humor โ run across the screen, trying to get to America before the gates are shut.
In a statement to The Verge, Tetris spokesperson Kerri Brusca clarified that the company wasnโt involved in the creation of Donald Trumpโs game. โWe are currently reviewing the matter.โ The various companies whose brands the White House ripped off to make and promote these games โ including Sega, Nintendo, Xbox, and the Flappy Bird Foundation Group โ did not immediately respond to The Verge โs request for comment.
Previously, the Trump administration has gotten in trouble for infringing on othersโ copyrights. The Department of Homeland Security has had to delete some of its racist, fancam-esque posts after receiving DMCA takedown requests.
The purpose of Trumpโs interminable memes, games, and other gimmicks is manifold: to drum up support for Trumpโs policies, to entertain his groyper fans, and, of course, to troll the libs. (One game, โRio Run,โ is like snake, except the head of the snake is a Border Patrol agent who collects migrants as he moves across the screen.
The president is deporting people.) But the games also inadvertently highlight the administrationโs policy failures, not to mention the hypocrisy of Trumpโs agenda. Trumpโs efforts to build a wall through protected lands in the Southwest, including Big Bend National Park, has been met with mass opposition โ even from Republicans in deep-red Texas who form a key part of the MAGA coalition.
Other games are similar reminders of how Trumpโs policies are backfiring, even on the right. Thereโs โFlappy Bill,โ a play on Flappy Bird that involves getting a bald eagle to deliver a piece of legislation to the National Mall.
Except the administration has rolled back protections under the Endangered Species Act, the landmark legislation that helped rescue bald eagles from the brink of extinction. The administrationโs supposed revamping of the National Mall has also been unpopular.
In โSupply Line,โ reminiscent of the game Tapper, you have to knock processed foods โ those filled with additives, seed oils, and artificial colorings โ off a conveyor belt before they get fed to schoolchildren. But Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F.
Hasnโt managed to do any of that. Besides issuing a likely AI-drafted report for his Make America Healthy Again commission, RFK Jr.โs main role at HHS has been to roll back vaccine recommendations and food safety regulations.
The administrationโs gutting of the Food and Drug Administration made it harder to investigate the spread of cyclosporiasis, the so-called explosive diarrhea parasite, earlier this year. If anything, these games serve as a great reminder that our well-being is a big joke to the president and the people who surround him.
Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates. Gaby Del Valle Gaming Policy Politics Most Popular Most Popular OpenAIโs next big AI model has โentered the AGI eraโ Is this the future of America?
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