Hong Kong netizens have produced a series a amusing memes expressing their anger at the allegedly shameless cloning of Japanese smartphone game “Puzzle & Dragons”. The so-called imposter, “Tower of Saviors”, last month promoted in Hong Kong by South Korean boy band sensation Big Bang, reportedly passed the 7 million download mark in October last year, prompting publisher Forgame to shell out more than USD90 million (HKD698 million) for a 21 percent stake in the parent company.
“Success depends on shanzhai”. Source Wikia
However the success of the game has not been celebrated among die-hard “Puzzle & Dragons” fans, who promptly got creative by doctoring up a series of anti-shanzhai (imitation) memes. One features the founder of Madhead (the parent company of “Tower of Saviors”) drinking from a mug baring the slogan “Success depends on shanzai”, while others went even further, somehow finding time to fashion an entire parody app, “Toilet of Plagiarists”.
Screenshot of Toilet of Plagarists via Google Play Store
According to Jason Li, who wrote about the online furore in his blog 88 Bar last week, the cloning of games is common practice, as there is no easy way to copyright such material. As a result, Li predicts there there are more than 20 other “Puzzle & Dragons” clones.
One example of such activity is the runaway Italian-made puzzle game “2048” (if you haven’t tried it, don’t start – it’s addictive!), a clone of Beijing-made “1024”, itself a clone of the original American-made game “Threes”.
Li concludes that beside upright politicians and diehard netizens, “most people actually don’t care”. Well that’s settled that one then!
