Twisted Pixel accuses Capcom of plagiarizing ‘Splosion Man with its MaXplosion App; won’t pursue legal action

By Stephany Nunneley

‘Splosion Man developer Twisted Pixel has accused Capcom of plagiarism over its MaXplosion App Store offering, but tells Joystiq it won’t pursue legal action against the firm.

Earlier, the developer called out Capcom’s 59p game on Twitter, saying it was a “complete theft” of  its hit XBLA title.

“If you’re going to outright steal a game, you should at least understand what makes it fun,” programmer Mike Henry tweeted. “Borrowing is great. Hell, we do it all the time. But that game is a complete theft.”

Twisted Pixel co-founder Michael Wilford later tweeted that the idea for ‘Splosion Man had been pitched to Capcom at one point, a pitch the firm turned down.

“Not sure what to say about MaXplosion,” Wilford tweeted. “Pisses me off. Guess we’re just gonna have to make a better iPhone game than them. Shouldn’t be hard.

“Best part is, we originally pitched [the game] to Capcom and they said no. I’ll always love Capcom [because] of what they brought to my childhood, but WTF have they turned into? First they lose Inafune, now this. [It] just sucks because we’re too small to do anything about it, and I bet Capcom’s counting on that.”

Speaking with Joystiq this afternoon, Wilford told the site it was “definitely not going to pursue legal action”.

“While I think the similarities are pretty nauseating, we’re too small to take on a company like Capcom,” he said. “That, and we owe them one for inventing Mega Man, so we’ll let them slide. I just hope they’re not counting on the fact that indies can’t fight back.

“In general, anything that would take our focus off of making games would be a bad decision, I think. We just need to keep our heads down making the next thing so that Capcom has something to steal next year.

“But I have to say, the amount of support we’ve seen in the last 12 hours on Twitter and over email has been awesome, and I think that’s better than wining [sic] a stupid lawsuit or anything like that. We’ll just have to make our own mobile game and I’m hopeful that Capcom will see that robbing our shit wasn’t worth it in the long run.

“We’ll let you know when we have something on the mobile front to talk about, but now we have added incentive.”

Capcom has yet to comment on the accusation.

Thanks, GI.biz.