DA
06-25-2009, 12:22 PM
Aquatica on iPhone looks, sounds, and plays an awful lot like thatgamecompany's flOw. So much so, in fact, that designer Jenova Chen accused Aquatica's developers at Ketera Software of, at the very least, very closely mimicking flOw, and at worst copying the game's source code outright. But is it really a total ripoff of Chen's early PSN title, or just an unfortunate case of unattributed inspiration? We got in touch with the folks at Ketera Software, and this is their side of the story:
"Aquatica was not built from the source code released by thatgamecompany. We can easily prove it by sending you, or anyone who requests it, any portion of our code to do any given task in the game, and the comparison should make it clear that our code was written completely from scratch. In fact, we were not even aware that the source code for flOw was released, and might release portions of our code, as well, to put to rest any speculation about copying the code.
"So to summarize, there was not a single line of code copied from the source code released by ThatGameCompany that is in Aquatica. We also apologize for not properly giving credit for the original idea of the game -- this has been fixed everywhere, including YouTube, iTunes, and our own site, though it will only show up on iTunes in several hours.
"We will also be contacting Jenova Chen personally."
As promised, where Ketera's Aquatica website once said, "From the makers of SpaceX, comes a new, unique game completely in a class of its own," it now reads, "Aquatica is an iPhone from-the-ground-up re-make of the famous flOw game created by Jenova Chen of the ThatGameCompany fame."
So what's the verdict? Harmless mistake, or deliberate attempt to cash in on someone else's ideas? Either way, it's a good thing this appears to have been resolved before it had the chance to get really ugly.
"Aquatica was not built from the source code released by thatgamecompany. We can easily prove it by sending you, or anyone who requests it, any portion of our code to do any given task in the game, and the comparison should make it clear that our code was written completely from scratch. In fact, we were not even aware that the source code for flOw was released, and might release portions of our code, as well, to put to rest any speculation about copying the code.
"So to summarize, there was not a single line of code copied from the source code released by ThatGameCompany that is in Aquatica. We also apologize for not properly giving credit for the original idea of the game -- this has been fixed everywhere, including YouTube, iTunes, and our own site, though it will only show up on iTunes in several hours.
"We will also be contacting Jenova Chen personally."
As promised, where Ketera's Aquatica website once said, "From the makers of SpaceX, comes a new, unique game completely in a class of its own," it now reads, "Aquatica is an iPhone from-the-ground-up re-make of the famous flOw game created by Jenova Chen of the ThatGameCompany fame."
So what's the verdict? Harmless mistake, or deliberate attempt to cash in on someone else's ideas? Either way, it's a good thing this appears to have been resolved before it had the chance to get really ugly.