The White House has apparently pulled one of its newly released arcade-style video games after a rebuke from the maker of Tetris. The White House game, called “Build the Wall,” was launched last week alongside a series of other games as part of the latest push by the Trump Administration to promote its policies through popular culture. In the game, players could stack blocks to form a wall to “protect the border from the coming horde,” in the style of the iconic, decades-old stacker game Tetris.
But on Tuesday, the game was no longer available on the White House website. The apparent removal of the game comes after the Tetris Company clarified that it was not involved in the creation of and was opposed to the politics behind the White House game. We take copyright infringement very seriously,” it added in the post.
TIME has reached out to the White House and Tetris for comment. The Tetris Company has become the latest company to distance itself from the Trump Administration’s use of copyrighted material to promote its agenda, and it took its criticism a step further by alluding to possible legal action. In March, the Pokémon Company said it had not authorized the White House’s use of imagery from the game Pokémon Pokopia.
Months earlier, the Pokémon Company had objected to a Department of Homeland Security video that used Pokémon branding and footage to promote Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Several songs by pop star Taylor Swift were also removed from Trump campaign and White House social media posts, and other celebrities like Olivia Rodrigo and Sabrina Carpenter have publicly condemned the Administration’s use of their music. The other White House games launched last week also borrowed mechanics associated with iconic games like Snake and Flappy Bird.
Promotional clips posted by the White House mimicked branding associated with Sega and Microsoft’s Xbox. In one clip, gamemaker Sega’s familiar start-up logo morphs into “MAGA,” the abbreviation for President Donald Trump’s slogan, “Make America Great Again.” Those companies have not publicly commented. Jasmine Crockett (D, Texas) posted, “Instead of creating policies that actually help people, the White House just rolled out arcade games.
They need to spend less time playing and more time governing. Folks need affordable groceries, not games.” Rep. Ted Lieu (D, Calif.) and Connecticut state senator Matt Lesser, also a Democrat, levied similar criticisms, arguing that the White House had misplaced priorities amid high fuel prices and inflation driven by the U.S.’s war against Iran.
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