Nintendo's Yoshi sneaks on to Google Play in unlicensed game

[nsane.forums]

Era's Adventure shows copyright infringement is alive and well in Android games.


"Yoshi! Yoshi Yoshi!" [translation: "Help! I'm in an unlicensed game being forced to destroy crates!"]

Mobile gaming boosters who want Nintendo to give up the hardware game and make titles for iOS and Android were probably excited to see a 3D render of Yoshi's smiling face looking up from a Google Play icon this week. Unfortunately, the green dinosaur's appearance in Era's Adventure 3D, from unknown Hungarian developer Andev, is as phony as the $1.99 bill you'd need to purchase the full version from Google's digital store.

As shown in its official YouTube trailer, the game features a 3D Yoshi model practically indistinguishable from the official art used for Nintendo's popular character (save for a permanent, slightly dazed grin on his face). It's unlikely that an official Nintendo game would feature that model walking around semi-realistic wood-and-stone environments, shooting a never-ending stream of fireballs at random piles of barrels and crates, but hey, you never know when Nintendo will decide to mix up the formula, right?

Google Play is full of homages to popular characters and games, of course (e.g., Awesome Land, which we featured in last week's Android app roundup), but this blatant use of another company's IP goes quite a bit farther than most. Despite Google's recent attempts to crack down on apps that are "confusingly similar," the Google Play store is still an untamed jungle with little order or control.

Unlike Apple, Google puts apps through little-to-no approval process before making them available on its online store, relying on post-release complaints from users or copyright holders instead. That might be for the best, since it's unrealistic to expect Google to do a full copyright and IP search for all of the thousands of apps that are submitted to Google Play every day (and even Apple's system lets through scams like last year's best-selling fake Pokemon Yellow app).

Neither Andev nor Nintendo immediately responded to our request for comment. In any case, we'd expect the normal post-release review process will take down Era's Adventure quite quickly, though it should be noted that none of the 12 "five star" user reviews for the game (out of 14 total so far) seem to mind the game's illegal use of a familiar Nintendo character. And the eventual takedown won't stop the 100 to 500 people that Google Play estimates have already downloaded the game from playing around with a virtual Yoshi on their phones and tablets. Maybe if they squint really hard, they can make themselves believe that Nintendo has actually fulfilled their dreams of a real Yoshi game on Android.

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