King: ‘We Should Never Have Published Pac-Avoid’

King CEO Riccardo Zacconi has defended the studio in light of recent controversies on the studio's website commenting "we should have never published Pac-Avoid."

The game hit headlines last week when developer Matthew Cox accused King of copying from his game, Scamperghost. Cox wrote, "King.com showed no respect for other people's intellectual property when they made a direct, blatant clone of Scamperghost." 

King swiftly removed Scamperghost from its online arcade after the accusations were levelled againt them.

In Zacconi's open letter, the executive was adamant that King does not copy other developers' games. 

"The details of the situation are complex, but the bottom line is that we should never have published Pac-Avoid. We have taken the game down from our site, and we apologize for having published it in the first place," said Zacconi. He said Pac-Avoid was "an exception to the rule" and added that "King does not clone games."

The studio was recently blasted for its efforts to trademark the term "candy" and the backlash against King let to the formation of a 'Candy Game Jam' the purpose of which is to develop games with candy in the title or which havea candy theme. 

Zacconi also spoke about the trademark, stating: 

"We are not trying to control the world's use of the word 'candy'; having a trademark doesn't allow us to do that anyway. We're just trying to prevent others from creating games that unfairly capitalize on our success."

He pointed to companies such as Time, Fortune, and Apple who have all trademarked everyday words for specific purposes. 

The organiser of Candy Game Jam told us: "The most important part, to me, is to shed light on King's aggressive litigation tactics."