Maciej Biedrzycki, the co-founder of
Codeminion Development Studios, the developer of the popular marble shooter
StoneLoops! of Jurassica, has just posted a disheartening bit of news on
his personal blog. According to Biedrzycki,
StoneLoops! of Jurassica was pulled from the App Store today at
MumboJumbo's request. If you aren't familiar, MumboJumbo is the developer of
Luxor, one of the most popular marble shooting games of all-time.
It all started about three weeks ago when Biedrzycki learned that MumboJumbo had supplied Apple with a formal complaint and request to have
StoneLoops! of Jurassica pulled from the App Store. The reason given was that they were "Infringing
Luxor copyright, confusing customers, stealing
Luxor’s look & feel and even stealing their source code." Apple then asked Codeminion Development Studios to issue a formal response. In their response they described how "ungrounded" each claim was and supplied the material to back up their own claims.
One of the claims that wasn't ungrounded was that when users searched for
Luxor in the App Store,
StoneLoops! of Jurassica turned up as one of the results. Apparently the reason for this was that the game's description contained a review by GameZebo that had this quote "more than worthy match for even more established industry goliaths like Zuma and
Luxor…” In response, Biedryzycki said that his company was willing to remove the quote if Apple decided that it was in poor taste.
Weeks passed since that time, which gave Biedryzycki hope that Apple had ruled in their favor after hearing their explanations. To his surprise,
StoneLoops! of Jurassica was yanked from the App Store early this morning. According to Biedryzycki, the final decision wasn't even made by Apple but by MumboJumbo. Apple had apparently asked MumboJumbo if Codeminion Development Studios' response was satisfactory and as you can see from the results, they decided it wasn't. But what company wouldn't jump at the chance of having their direct competition removed from the App Store?
To add another odd twist to the story, Codeminion Development Studios had actually considered MumboJumbo as one of their publishers before deciding to go with
Playcreek. MumboJumbo had the opportunity to preview the game before it was even released and yet they never expressed any serious concerns about copyright infringement. Well, that is until
StoneLoops! of Jurassica became the smashing success that it is... or I should say was.
Codeminion Development Studios hopes this isn't the end for
StoneLoops! of Jurassica for the iPhone and iPod touch. They are going to continue to fight for their beloved marble shooter in hopes that it will someday make it back to the App Store. But in the meantime, if you would still like to play it on other platforms, you sure can. Biedryzycki points out that
StoneLoops! of Jurassica has and still does continue to directly compete with
Luxor on many other platforms "without any problems whatsoever."
