White House takes down ‘Build the Wall’ game after the Tetris Company complains

In Brief

A video game posted to the Trump administration’s website — one that closely resembled Tetris — has been taken down after the Tetris Company complained.

The White House recently took the unusual step of posting a number of arcade-style video games to its website. One of the more controversial was a game called “Build the Wall,” which reportedly mirrored Tetris’ gameplay, tasking players with stacking blocks of various shapes and sizes. Widely criticized as racist, the stated goal of the game was to build a wall in order to keep out a “zombie border siege.”

Not long after Build the Wall’s existence became public, the Tetris Company — which owns the rights to the original Tetris game — spoke out about it, clarifying that it had no role in its creation. “The Tetris Company was not involved in the creation of ‘Build the Wall,’” it said in an Instagram post, adding: “We take copyright infringement very seriously.”

The page for Build the Wall now returns a 404 error, meaning the page no longer exists. Kotaku first spotted that the game was no longer visible on the White House’s website. TechCrunch has reached out to the Trump administration for comment.

Still visible on the government’s website is a game called Rio Run, where players control a white male character whose goal is to deport as many immigrant characters as possible.

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