The Trump Administration has been using video games to forward and advertise its political messaging for over a year now, caring very little about whether it is infringing on others’ copyright and intellectual property rights. However, it seems that not every company is ready to tolerate the US’ ruling political elite, as the Tetris Company appears to have managed to strongarm the White House into compliance.
The reason being: The White House built a Tetris clone and hosted it on an arcade game .gov website, promptly naming it Build The Wall. It was meant to further advertise and push Trump’s megalomaniacal project to construct a massive wall along the US-Mexico border that would, in theory, prevent illegal immigration from that side of the world.
But like the Great Wall did not stop the Mongols and only cost a bunch of money and untold human resources, so would this wall probably be rather ineffective, which doesn’t stop Trump and the US government from propagating the idea over an entire decade by now.
And one tool of propaganda lately has been these arcade video games, Build The Wall included, and the Tetris Company has taken great offense at its IP being used for political purposes. In a tweet posted Sept. 7, the company said it was not involved with the creation of the game in question and that it “take[s] copyright infringement very seriously.” It also stated that it is against dividing people.
“To our fans everywhere: we love you, we see you, and we’re grateful to have you in our community,” the statement reads.
Not long after, it seems the Build The Wall game was also taken down. The White House doesn’t seem to have provided any official statement regarding the game’s removal, nor did the Tetris Company say anything beyond that tweet quoted above. The game is simply gone, which, to commend the Tetris Company, marks a rare instance of a corporation taking a firm stance against the current US administration.
Various games and IPs have been used as part of the political messaging campaign of the Trump Administration. Just last night, the official White House account on X posted “The Legend of Trump,” a Legend of Zelda parody featuring the president signing executive orders and walking around the White House grounds. It’s pretty much infringing on Nintendo’s IP, but there doesn’t seem to be any will in that corporation to put an end to it.
