Copyright Infringement! – Wak-a-Rat Review

The developer of this app, Csaba Iranyi, has used unmodified artwork from "Sam and Max Hit the Road," a point-and-click adventure game released by Lucasarts in 1993, as the basis for this game. The game itself appears to operate identically to the original "whack-a-rat" sequence from the Lucasarts game from which it has been taken. The game contains no progession in gameplay of any kind, beyond a simple score counter. The sole difference here is that, after you complete various random tasks, like hitting 15 rats in a row, or hitting Max--here referred to as "The Rabbit"--50 times, you "unlock carnival prizes," which means that the background color of an item's slot in the "Carnival Prizes" screen changes from beige to blue, and nothing more. Again, the items are made of plagiarized inventory item artwork from the original Lucasarts game. Iranyi is attempting to profit from this act of theft as well, as although the app is free-to-play, Iranyi charges users between $0.99 and $9.99 to purchase temporary power-ups, which make the rats move 2x slower, make each whacked rat count as 2 points rather than 1, or make hitting Max count towards your score. Iranyi also charges money to remove the game's banner advertisement, the presence of which also ostensibly generates profit for Iranyi. As Iranyi goes to lengths to omit the names of the game's starring characters from the app entirely, and as it is searchable in the app store, not by the term "Sam and Max," but by the term "SCUMM," the name of the game engine with which "Sam and Max Hit the Road" was originally created, i strongly believe Iranyi does not have permission to use these graphics and is doing so illegally. On a personal note, this makes me very sad, because I am a huge fan of "Sam and Max Hit the Road," as I imagine that Iranyi must be to even think to pirate it's assets like this. However, the use of these images here clearly falls outside of the protection afforded for fair use, and I think Iranyi needs to be stopped from peddling this violation of copyright law.
Review by Nick Tashiro on Wak-a-Rat.