The White House made a “Tetris” clone. The Tetris Company was not amused.

白宫制作了一款“俄罗斯方块”克隆游戏，俄罗斯方块公司对此很不高兴。

An anti-immigration-themed adaptation of Tetris was removed from the White House website over the weekend. The move comes days after The Tetris Company disavowed any involvement with the game and said that it “take[s] copyright infringement very seriously.” 上周末，一款以反移民为主题的《俄罗斯方块》改编游戏从白宫网站上被移除。此前，俄罗斯方块公司（The Tetris Company）曾发表声明，否认与该游戏有任何关联，并表示他们“非常重视版权侵权问题”。

The White House’s “Build the Wall” game asked players to stop a “Zombie Border siege” by stacking Tetris-styled bricks in an attempt to “hold the line.” Unlike in Tetris, though, the blocks in “Build the Wall” don’t disappear when you complete a line, meaning each brick contributes to an impassable barrier for the pixel-art “zombies” marching in from the “Southern Border.” That change makes the gameplay pretty uninteresting for anything but cheap propaganda, and it also means that every game quickly and ironically ends with a “Border Breached” message when the blocks inevitably fill up the well. 白宫推出的这款名为“筑墙”（Build the Wall）的游戏，要求玩家通过堆叠俄罗斯方块风格的砖块来阻止“僵尸边境围攻”，试图“守住防线”。然而，与《俄罗斯方块》不同的是，在“筑墙”中，当你完成一行时，方块并不会消失。这意味着每一块砖都成为了阻挡从“南部边境”涌入的像素风“僵尸”的障碍。这种改动使得游戏除了作为廉价的宣传工具外，几乎毫无趣味可言。讽刺的是，这也意味着当方块不可避免地填满屏幕时，每一局游戏都会迅速以“边境被突破”（Border Breached）的消息告终。

Amerika Garcia Grewal, co-director of Texas migrant rights group Frontera Federation, told AFP last week that the makers of the game “have lost touch with what it means to be human and care for others.” 德克萨斯州移民权利组织“Frontera Federation”的联合主任阿美利卡·加西亚·格雷瓦尔（Amerika Garcia Grewal）上周告诉法新社，这款游戏的制作者“已经失去了对人性与关怀他人的理解”。

“Build The Wall” was one of five simple web games that went up on a new “Arcade” section of WhiteHouse.gov (as well as an alternative arcade.gov URL) just before Labor Day weekend. The game’s previous URL now returns a 404 / Page Not Found error and has done so since sometime after Sunday morning, according to Internet Archive snapshots (where a playable version is still available). Other Trump Arcade games based on Flappy Bird and Snake remain on the site today. “筑墙”是白宫在劳动节周末前于 WhiteHouse.gov 新设的“街机”（Arcade）板块（以及备用网址 arcade.gov）上线的五款简单网页游戏之一。根据互联网档案（Internet Archive）的快照显示（目前仍可在该网站找到可玩版本），该游戏的原始链接自周日上午后的某个时间起，已显示为 404 页面未找到错误。其他基于《Flappy Bird》和《贪吃蛇》的特朗普街机游戏目前仍保留在网站上。

Hey, that’s our game

嘿，那是我们的游戏

In a statement on Friday, a spokesperson for The Tetris Company said it was “reviewing the matter” and that the company “was not involved in the creation of ‘Build the Wall’ and did not authorize or license the Tetris brand or intellectual property for the game.” The company reiterated that message in a social media post Friday afternoon, writing that it “believe[s] in the power of connection and bringing people together, not dividing them.” 周五，俄罗斯方块公司的一位发言人在声明中表示，公司正在“审查此事”，并称公司“并未参与‘筑墙’游戏的制作，也未授权或许可该游戏使用俄罗斯方块的品牌或知识产权”。该公司在周五下午的社交媒体帖子中重申了这一立场，写道他们“相信连接与团结的力量，而不是分裂”。

The Tetris Company has a long history of protecting its intellectual property via frequent takedown requests and legal proceedings against games that copy its gameplay and/or style. And while unofficial Tetris clones are still relatively easy to find, officially licensed versions of the game are available on everything from the Data Zapper M7000 to a giant plastic chicken McNugget. 俄罗斯方块公司长期以来一直通过频繁的下架请求和法律诉讼来保护其知识产权，针对那些抄袭其玩法和/或风格的游戏。虽然非官方的俄罗斯方块克隆游戏仍然很容易找到，但官方授权的版本已覆盖了从 Data Zapper M7000 到巨型塑料麦乐鸡块等各种设备。

While gameplay mechanics and rules are generally not copyrightable, the look and feel of a particular expression of those rules can be protected under US copyright law. In 2012, a Circuit Court judge identified some basic elements of Tetris that he said could earn this kind of “trade dress” protection when appearing in concert, including the size of the playfield and the “next piece” display. 虽然游戏机制和规则通常不受版权保护，但这些规则在特定表现形式下的“外观和感觉”（look and feel）可以受到美国版权法的保护。2012 年，一位巡回法院法官指出，《俄罗斯方块》的一些基本元素在组合出现时，可以获得这种“商业外观”（trade dress）保护，包括游戏区域的大小和“下一个方块”的显示方式。

Legal arguments aside, the White House probably wants to avoid a prolonged public fight with the makers of a beloved video game during the run-up to federal legislative elections. In promoting the launch of the White House Arcade site, the White House social media team created parody videos mimicking the iconic start-up sequences from classic game consoles from Sega, Nintendo, and Sony. The Trump administration has previously used explicit Halo imagery to promote its military policies, a move that resulted in pointed silence from Microsoft. 撇开法律争议不谈，白宫可能希望在联邦立法选举前夕，避免与一款备受喜爱的电子游戏的制作方发生旷日持久的公开争执。在推广白宫街机网站时，白宫社交媒体团队制作了模仿世嘉、任天堂和索尼等经典游戏机标志性开机画面的恶搞视频。特朗普政府此前曾使用《光环》（Halo）的明确图像来宣传其军事政策，此举导致微软方面保持了尖锐的沉默。