Cozy RPG Vanishes from Steam, Possibly Due to Tetris Copying Concerns

The Steam store page for the cozy farming sim Starsand Island vanished last night. The game’s official social media account issued a statement, attributing the removal to “insufficient verification during the planning stage of a minigame within this game.” While the statement didn’t specify which minigame was at fault, fans suspect it might be a blatant clone of Tetris.

As noted by observers, trying to access the Steam page for Starsand Island now redirects users to Steam’s homepage. According to the statement from the game’s social media, this was a voluntary removal by the developers as part of “emergency measures” after discovering “expressions from external works” that were “inappropriately used without the permission of the rights holders.”

Users on a gaming forum believe they’ve identified the issue: Starblock, one of the arcade minigames included in the game. I found some footage of it online, and it’s evident that it closely resembles Tetris.

Over the years, many Tetris-inspired games have emerged without any affiliation to the rights holders, The Tetris Company. If titles like Lumines and Drop Duchy aren’t infringing on copyright, what exactly is Starsand Island doing wrong that these other games aren’t?

It turns out, creating a Tetris-like game is generally acceptable. This is supported by the 2012 court ruling in Tetris Holding, LLC and The Tetris Company v. Xio Interactive, Inc. However, directly copying specific elements from Tetris—like the exact shapes of the tetrominos, the “ghost” mechanic that shows where a tetromino will land, and the 10×20 board from the original game—is not allowed.

It seems that Starsand Island’s Starblock minigame has replicated all three of these elements, and The Tetris Company is known for being quite aggressive in protecting its intellectual property. There’s no word yet on when Starsand Island’s Steam page will be restored, but recent updates on SteamDB suggest a new version of the game is ready.

Given that this is just the latest in a series of controversies surrounding Starsand Island, it seems likely that we’ll be hearing more about this seemingly unremarkable farming sim in the coming months.