While some online communities accused 6waves Lolapps of cloning Spry Fox's Triple Town late last year, the company defended its actions, saying that such criticisms are part of a "natural process."
While Zynga is currently taking heat for allegedly copying NimbleBit's Tiny Tower, it isn't the only major developer to be criticized in recent weeks for borrowing from other games. Social developer and publisher 6waves Lolapps ran into similar trouble last month, though the company says this sort of criticism is just part of a "natural process." The accusations against 6waves Lolapps began in late December, when it made its mobile debut with Yeti Town (developed by the newly-acquired Escalation Studios). Once players got their hands on the game, some online communities decried 6waves Lolapps for stealing core gameplay mechanics from Spry Fox's Triple Town. In a recent interview with Gamasutra, 6waves Lolapps chief product officer Arjun Sethi and Escalation's Marc Tardif took a moment to defend their title from such harsh accusations. "There are a lot of other match-three games out there that are similar, and I think that being criticized like that is just part of a natural process," explained Sethi. Reflecting on Yeti Town's inception, Tardif explained that the game was not planned as a commercial release at all, but rather began as an internal side project that took place between Escalation's regular development cycles. As the game took shape, however, 6waves Lolapps and Escalation chose to turn the budding project into a full-scale game. "The game turned out to be really fun, and we had an opportunity to test some of the stuff that 6waves Lolapps wanted to do, and given that there wasn't anything like it on the platform, we decided to release it," Tardif said. In the weeks following Yeti Town's release, however, Spry Fox debuted its iOS version of Triple Town, pitting 6wave Lolapps' title directly against the game it was allegedly borrowing from. Though regardless of what its competitors are up to, 6waves Lolapps said it plans to continue development on Yeti Town to both add new content, and further distinguish it from similar games on the market. "Even if you look at something like Minecraft and Infiniminer… they started off in similar places, but Minecraft has evolved so much in the last year or so into something completely different, and we want Yeti Town to take the same approach," explained Tardif.
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