I’m no fan of Swing Copters or the two previous games made by creator Dong Nguyen, which includes Flappy Bird and Flappy Birds Family for those who weren’t aware, but as someone who loves games and respects the hard work that creators put into them, I’m even less of a fan of games that attempt to clone or otherwise copy the original works of art. Forget the fact that it is a blatant thievery of intellectual property, it’s just extremely lazy and quite honestly pathetic. With that being said, you may have already heard that Google has been doing right by Nguyen by removing reportedly hundreds of Swing Copters clones from the Play Store, and they haven’t been up for more than a day or two at best.
What isn’t known is whether or not creator Dong Nguyen had filed a complaint over copyright,(which he has the right to do if he so chooses)or if Google was simply taking the initiative to remove these on their own because they know the clones are violating their policy. Either possibility results in the same thing, Google removing these clones from the Play Store so we don’t have to sift through tons of knock offs just to find a few good games. Just like with the Flappy Bird clones, these Swing Copters rip-offs were sure to be popular hits and somehow make their ways up the list of popular free and paid games, which would only end up pushing back other original titles.
According to the report Google had taken down any games that were “obvious clones,” which sounds like that could encompass any game which looks visually similar, and they have also reportedly removed any games that harbor the Swing Copters name in any way. That doesn’t mean that there won’t be any copies that remain in the Play Store, sadly. Hopefully this will be the beginning of a more heavy handed stance on this type of thing. Swing Copters is arguably a frustrating game for many due to its extreme difficulty and surely many people wish it too would just disappear, nevertheless Swing Copters is an original work from Nguyen and it deserves to the see the limelight over any of the clones that plague the Google Play Store.