17Jul2007
FLASHGames Gets the C&D Letter from Sony
If you enjoy Sony game shows on FLASHGames², sadly your days of those games are over. The gaming website was recently given a cease and desist letter from Sony, asking to remove many games such as Bullseye, Tic Tac Dough, The Joker’s Wild, Russian Roulette, and High Rollers. However, don’t worry; more games, including the return of Quickplay, are well on the way. This is a huge shame, though. Wonder what took them seven years since it is a rather high profile site and they’ve worked with Sony and GSN on projects.
It’s all about enforcing the intellectual property rights in the games (though the delay makes them look mean-spirited), plus there is $$$ in those sorts of games to be had in the market. Ideally, Sony should hook up with FlashGames to develop such games for sale…
sad to see it all go… i spent many a good hour on those games. i really liked the high rollers game and the tic tac dough games. luckily, the concentration games are still up… whenever i have a hard time making a decision, i input my choices in the “dream edition” (usually four “yes” and four “no”), then play the game for somewhat of a magic 8-ball decision!
too bad sony’s missing out… flashgames^2 really has some talented folks there, and i’m eagerly awaiting the return of quickplay! (luckily, i don’t think any of the games removed from the site were potential quickplay themes, were they?)
Aw, man! Russian Roulette was my favorite game there!
What I don’t understand is that many of the fan-made games are a lot better than most other games featured on corporate sites like Sony’s; why don’t they just hire them to program their games? It would be a good compromise for both the company and the fans.
Man. SONY is going down the drain. They are so desperate to ruin everything. What SONY SHOULD be doing to the makers of these flashgames, instead of sending thretening letters but to hire them on to do flash programming for these game shows for the sony websites. I still remember what happened to joytube last year at this time. They should praise the makers, not ruin their $hit.
It’s bad enough that theyre bringing in new young execs, added to that is the lack of PS3 sales.
What a shame.
There is a significant population of game show geeks who enjoy playing the bonus rounds of their favorite game shows. Bullseye, Tic Tac, and many more are great classics that are fun plays during free time from work.
Now, Sony wants to be the Big Bad Bully on the block and shut down a website because people are enjoying an group’s creative expression…one that they were offering to the community for FREE, not making money in the process (that I know of).
I can tell you what I think Sony should do with that cease and desist but I think they are too tight in that particular region for a crumpled up piece of paper to fit.
Why dont they just change the names of the games very slightly, and if need be change one little thing on the game, that way they are not the ACTUAL game so there is no problems and rather then having to remove them completly they are just a tad different
I appreciate all the comments and emails we’re getting, but really it just comes down to “business” with these companies; even though we were a fansite, we didn’t pursue proper permissions to use said titles – hence the letter.
My letter has not been returned from Sony about who to talk to about the games, nor do I suspect I will get one. They would likely put a hefty price tag on using the titles regardless just to slap our wrists.
As I wrote on our frontpage, I’m not interested in making enemies or fighting a legal battle over something that I know we “technically” did wrong. But I look at it in a positive way that we obviously were good enough to shut down, so MAYBE they’ll keep that in mind when they start bringing these things to the web.
Just Sony being the typical “1984″-esque Big Brother entity it has eroded into. After hucking game systems for about double what they were actually worth, then hemorraging publishers for its poor portable, guess they had to turn on fans of something other than video games for a change.
At least Fremantle appreciates the work you guys do.
You know it’s a shame that they are doing this. I really like playing those games at flashgames. I mean this is Sony being the Big Brother and go “oh you can’t have that game at your website because we will sue.” I mean it is really insane.
Just go to archive.org and you can play all the games minus TTD.