Harry Price, the author of the offending game, called somewhat ironically Crime Busters, at first denied the progam was a rip-off but Alison Beasely, of Mastertronic says: « The first 50 bytes of both programs are exactly the same, the solutions to the games are almost the same, the character sets are copies and even our hacker trap is included in IJK's game. » Beasely gave Price two options: « If told him to write an apology to us, stating that the game was copied. » Price refused and, according to Beasely, she said, « In that case you'll receive a writ for fraud and infringement of copyright tomorrow. « After that he agreed to write the letter » concluded Beasely. Since their discussion IJK has withdrawn Crime Busters and asked distributors to return all stocks. Ian Sinclair, a director of the company, says: « We're an old software house, five years old, and we're extremely upset that something like this could have happened when we launch our game. It is the sort of thing that could happen to any software house - the market's got so big that we can't possibly look at all the games. » Mastertronic received the game from SU staffer Jim Douglas, who, being a sharp lad, noticed similarities between Crime Busters and Spellbound. |
