The Story Of Wooden Labyrinth 3D
The Wooden Labyrinth 3D was one of the more popular Finnish mobile apps before the arrival of Angry Birds from Rovio. To this date, Wooden Labyrinth has been downloaded some 10+ million times. The app was developed in 2009 by Elias Pietilä in February 2009. We've covered Elias Pietilä before when he ran into problems with a game called Pajazzo with the Finnish Moneygaming Association (RAY). We talked to Pietilä about the success of the game.
Since the launching of the game, it has generated a couple of hundred thousand euros for Pietilä. In the beginning of 2009 the game was immediately being sold for a few hundred euros a day. After giving out the free version of the game, the paid version improved sales as well.
GameBook Scores An Investment From Anssi Vanjoki
The former Nokia executive has invested into GameBook, a developer of real time scoring information for golfers in the form of a mobile app. GameBook is a Finnish run startup and has very strong and high profile investors before Vanjoki already. Some of the previous investors include Mikko Ilonen (European tour player), Teemu Selänne and Elias Pietilä (famous Finnish iPhone developer - received an Apple Design Award as a student). Vanjoki will join the Board of Directors with his investment.
Finnish Gaming Monopoly Signs A Deal With iPhone App Maker
Helsingin Sanomat reports that RAY, the monopoly called Finnish Slotmachine Association, has signed a deal with the iPhone app maker Elias Pietilä regarding his Pajatzo game we earlier reported on. Pietilä had done an iPhone game that reminds of the popular Pajatso game, where the user taps coins into the small holes in the board. This did not go down well with RAY, even though they do not own the trademark for the game. Janne Peräkylä, the head of RAY, has stated that Pajatso is extremely important for them, "If there's Suomi and sisu (the Finnish mentality), there's RAY and Pajatso".
Finnish Gaming Monopoly Ready To Sue An iPhone App Maker
It seems that the Finnish gaming monopoly, RAY, is the latest in the game of playing the big bad wolf who doesn't want to play nice. Finnish Helsingin Sanomat reports that they are ready to sue an iPhone app maker Elias Pietilä, for creating a game of the similar concept from one of the oldest coin games in Finland, Pajatso. Elias Pietilä calles his version of the game Pajatzo.
RAY (or the Finnish Slotmachine Association) has referred to the trademark law, law regarding good business practices (laxly translated) as well as the ever-so-famous copyright law. The first odd issue that puts the whole case into perspective is that RAY does not own the trademark to Pajatso, the original game concept.
