When HN users recommended it
1 HN user recommended this in 2012, in one comment.
20072026
Each tall tick is one HN user's first recommendation. A short tick is the same user again. Click a tick to jump to the comment.
1 HN user recommended this in 2012, in one comment.
Each tall tick is one HN user's first recommendation. A short tick is the same user again. Click a tick to jump to the comment.
People do indeed continue to buy Pac-Man from Namco (http://www.amazon.com/Namco-Networks-40406PAC-MAN-PAC-MAN-Do... for instance, put there as recently as 2010), and the general IP is alive and well. (New games, and a new Pac-Man 3D cartoon is already in production for airing in 2013.) Namco has in the past sent cease & desist or DMCA takedown letters to websites hosting clones of their IP (here's a story of but one, again from 2010: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100730/17081510430.shtml), if you bet they don't care you're going to lose that bet. Besides the original by itself there's also lots of collections that are sold fairly often (every year? at least every few years) that Pac-Man comes with.
If you're arguing that "apparent recent interest by the IP owner" is the moral basis (obviously not the legal basis) for ripoffs, then you have to conclude that this Pac-Man clone, too, is wrong.