The Steam store page for the cozy farming sim Starsand Island, developed and published by Seed Sparkle Lab, was wiped from existence last night. The official X account for the game released a statement on the same day, blaming the removal on “insufficient verification during the planning stage of a minigame within this game.” While the statement didn’t point to a specific minigame, fans have theorized that it may be due to a very blatant clone of Tetris.
As spotted by GameSpark, attempting to access the Steam page for Starsand Island will instead redirect you to Steam’s homepage. As noted by the statement from Starsand Island’s X account, this was a self-imposed removal by the devs, as part of “emergency measures” following the discovery of “expressions from external works” which were “inappropriately used without the permission of the rights holders.”
Users on r/Starsandisland are fairly certain they’ve found the culprit: Starblock, one of the many arcade minigames featured within the game. I managed to track down some footage of the game on YouTube, and it’s pretty clear that it’s a rip-off of Tetris.
Of course, multiple Tetris-inspired games, unaffiliated with the rights holders The Tetris Company, have popped up over the years. If the likes of Lumines and Drop Duchy aren’t infringing on any copyright laws, what exactly is Starsand Island doing wrong that these other games aren’t?
Turns out, it’s actually fine to make a Tetris-like game. At least, that’s based on the conclusion of the Tetris Holding, LLC and The Tetris Company v. Xio Interactive, Inc. court ruling in 2012. What isn’t fine, however, is copying certain elements from Tetris, such as the exact shapes of the tetrominos, the “ghost” mechanic (the outline that points out where a tetromino will land), and the 10×20 board featured in the original game.
It’s pretty clear that Starsand Island’s Starblock minigame copied all three of these elements, and The Tetris Company is rather litigious when it comes to the Tetris IP. There’s currently no word on exactly when Starsand Island’s Steam page will reappear, but, based on the latest depot updates for the game on SteamDB, a new version of the game is ready to go.
However, considering this is only the latest entry in Starsand Island’s already long list of controversies, I have an odd feeling that this isn’t the last time we’ll hear about the otherwise unassumingly non-distinct farming sim in the next few months.