Olympics website hosting 'pirated' games

The Beijing Olympics Organizing Committee threatens harsh penalties for anybody who pirates its intellectual property

The Beijing Olympics Organizing Committee has removed a game from its official website after complaints that it was substantially copied from an independent US developer's work.

Other games which also appear similar to existing products remain on the site, however.

New York-based games developer Cadin Batrack claimed in a blog posting that "the Olympics stole my game".

Batrack highlighted what he claims are strong similarities between his Snow Day game, and a game on the Olympics website titled Fuwa Fight the Winter Clouds.

The graphics and game play of the two simple Flash games do appear to be substantially similar, and are apparently identical in places. The program code also has similarities, such as identical variable names.

Batrack first published Snow Day in November 2006. It included a copyright notice, which does not appear in the game on the Olympic site.

The Beijing Olympics Organizing Committee threatens harsh penalties under Chinese law for anybody who pirates its intellectual property, such as the official Olympics cartoon mascots that appear in the Fuwa game.

These include confiscation of income generated by the illegal use, as well as a fine of $7,000 or up to five times any illegal income.

After Batrack's claims began to draw attention on the internet this morning, Fuwa Fight the Winter Clouds was removed from the Olympics website.

However, at least two other games on the site also appear to be partial copies of existing games.

"Two of the other games on the Olympic site are obvious rip-offs of Ferry Halim's games," said Batrack.

Some of these games include copyright notices from Nasdaq-listed Chinese firm Sohu, which did not reply to a request for comment today.

As well as developing games, Batrack helped create interactive websites for movies such as X-Men, Spiderman and The Hulk.