The official website of the President of the United States was, until this week, hosting an unlicensed Tetris clone where players stacked bricks to repel a "zombie border siege." The Tetris Company noticed. The White House, caught red-handed, quietly deleted the game and said absolutely nothing about it.
What They Actually Built
Last week, the White House unveiled what it is calling an arcade section on its official website, a collection of five video games built around Donald Trump's policy agenda. According to NBC News, the games are direct clones of some of the most recognizable titles in gaming history.
The now-deleted game, called Build the Wall, was a Tetris knockoff where players stacked bricks to construct a border wall while the game's introduction instructed them to "hold the line" against a "zombie border siege." Another game, Rio Run, plays like Snake and instructs players to "patrol the line along the river" and "pick up every crosser." The BBC reports that when players hit the edge of the map, a counter labeled "Deported" tallies their score. Then there's Flappy Bill, a Flappy Bird clone where a bald eagle dodges National Mall monuments to keep "the bill in the air."
This is the official website of the executive branch of the United States government. Just sit with that for a second.
Tetris Was Not Having It
On September 4th, the Tetris Company posted a statement to X making clear it had zero involvement with Build the Wall and takes "copyright infringement very seriously." The BBC notes the company has teeth here: it successfully sued and settled with the makers of the iPhone game Mino in 2012 over nearly identical look-and-feel claims.
"At Tetris we believe in the power of connection and bringing people together, not dividing them," the company said. "To our fans everywhere: we love you, we see you, and we're grateful to have you in our community." That last part is a remarkably graceful way of telling the President of the United States to go to hell.
The Wayback Machine confirms Build the Wall was still live on the White House website as of Monday afternoon, NBC News reports. It was gone by Tuesday. The White House has not offered any explanation to NBC, the BBC, or anyone else.
Oh, They Also Stole From Nintendo, Sega, and Xbox
Build the Wall was not, it must be stressed, the only intellectual property the White House decided to help itself to this week. According to NBC News, the White House also posted promotional videos for its arcade using modified versions of the Xbox startup animation, the Sega startup jingle (changed from "Sega" to "MAGA," because of course), and the Nintendo GameCube startup sequence.
Then on Tuesday, the same day Build the Wall vanished, the White House posted a video to its X account mirroring The Legend of Zelda, complete with the game's logo, font, and music, rebranded as "The Legend of Trump." Nintendo, Sega, and Xbox had not responded to NBC News' requests for comment at time of publication. Given that Nintendo has sued fans into oblivion for far less, their silence is probably temporary.
The White House has a documented history of this. The BBC reports that in March, the Pokémon Company International criticized the administration for using Pikachu in a MAGA meme. Before that, the official White House account posted an AI-generated image of Trump in a suit from the video game Halo, and later mixed actual footage of U.S. military strikes in Iran with a clip of Master Chief. Steve Downes, the voice of Master Chief, publicly condemned that one before deleting his tweet.
This Is Not Even New Behavior
Video games are just the latest category. NBC News points out that the Trump administration has a well-established pattern of using copyrighted material without permission across music, books, and animated characters.
In December, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posted an image of Franklin the Turtle, the beloved children's book character, in combat gear firing a bazooka at boats, captioned "Franklin Targets Narco Terrorists." The publisher, Kids Can Press, called it unauthorized and strongly condemned the use. That same month, singer Sabrina Carpenter went public after the White House used her music over footage of ICE agents detaining people, calling the video "evil and disgusting" and demanding the administration never involve her or her music in its agenda again.
The pattern is clear enough at this point. See something popular. Take it. Use it for political messaging. Wait to see if anyone complains loudly enough. Remove it quietly if they do. Repeat.
Who Has Time for This?
Connecticut Democratic state senator Matt Lesser put it plainly on X, as the BBC reports: "Heating oil is near an all-time high but hey you can play Border Tsar Tom Homan in a video game."
That is a fair point. The United States government, operating at the direction of its executive branch, spent time and public resources building bootleg arcade games, stealing startup animations from three separate gaming giants, and publishing a Zelda parody in the same week it was supposed to be governing a country. There are people in this country who cannot afford to heat their homes. The White House is out here making Tetris clones about a wall that is also not built.
The Dingo Take
You are supposed to believe that this is a communications strategy. That somewhere in the West Wing, someone with a government salary and a security clearance sat down and thought, yes, what the Trump administration needs right now is an unlicensed Tetris game, three stolen startup jingles, a Zelda knockoff, and a Snake clone where the score is called "Deported." And then other people looked at that plan and said, great, let's do it, let's put this on the official website of the President of the United States.
The Tetris Company, a private business whose entire product is a 40-year-old puzzle game about stacking blocks, had to publicly tell the executive branch of the most powerful government on earth to stop stealing their stuff. That happened. That is real. Nintendo is probably drafting something as you read this, because Nintendo sues everybody, and "the White House made an unauthorized Zelda video" is not a sentence that ends well for the White House.
The four remaining games are still up. Rio Run, Flappy Bill, and the rest of the collection are sitting on whitehouse.gov right now, unlicensed and unashamed. The administration didn't take them down because it had a change of heart about intellectual property law. It took down the one game that had a company publicly threatening legal action. The lesson it took from this week is not "stop stealing things." The lesson is "steal from companies that haven't noticed yet."
Comments