The maker of Tetris criticized a new White House digital game that mimics its classic puzzle by having players build a wall to stop migrants from crossing the US border.
“P.S. The Tetris Company was not involved in the creation of ‘Build the Wall,'” the company posted on X Friday. “P.P.S. We take copyright infringement very seriously.”
Build the Wall is one of five games the White House released this week that inserted Trump administration themes into versions of old-school video games. It asks players to “protect the border from the coming horde” by building a wall with blocks resembling Tetris pieces as pixelated extraterrestrial-like figures approach.
“At Tetris, we believe in the power of connection and bringing people together, not dividing them,” the company wrote in its post.
Another game, Rio Run, resembles an old mobile phone game called Snake, with a balding, white-haired character in a suit tasked with picking up “every crosser.” Each person collected adds to the player's deportee score.
Other games play off themes including the Trump administration's Make America Healthy Again standards and the Trump Accounts savings program.
The White House unveiled Arcade.gov on social media through animated clips styled after the loading screens of Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox, Sony Group Corp.'s PlayStation and Nintendo Co. One of the animations reworked the Japanese company Sega Corp. logo into “MAGA,” a nod to Trump's “Make America Great Again” slogan.
Microsoft, Xbox, Sony, PlayStation and Nintendo didn't respond to a request for comment from Bloomberg News. Sega acknowledged the request, but didn't provide a comment.
Tetris joins a group of artists and rights holders that have objected to the Trump administration's use of their intellectual property in government social media posts without their consent, including Olivia Rodrigo, Sabrina Carpenter and Kids Can Press, publisher of Franklin the Turtle.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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