White House Pulls “Build the Wall” Game After Tetris Company Copyright Warning
- The White House has removed “Build the Wall,” a Tetris-style game, from the arcade website it launched last week — four days after The Tetris Company publicly disowned the game and said it takes “cop…
- The removal was first spotted Tuesday by Video Games Chronicle, which added it to its earlier report, and was picked up the same day by Kotaku and The Verge.
- The company posted to X and Instagram on Friday, the day after the site went live:
The White House has removed “Build the Wall,” a Tetris-style game, from the arcade website it launched last week — four days after The Tetris Company publicly disowned the game and said it takes “copyright infringement very seriously.”
The removal was first spotted Tuesday by Video Games Chronicle, which added it to its earlier report, and was picked up the same day by Kotaku and The Verge. Kotaku reported the game was already gone by Tuesday morning.
What The Tetris Company Said
The company posted to X and Instagram on Friday, the day after the site went live:
“At Tetris we believe in the power of connection and bringing people together, not dividing them. To our fans everywhere — we love you, we see you, and we’re grateful to have you in our community.”
“P.S. The Tetris Company was not involved in the creation of ‘Build the Wall’.”
“P.P.S. We take copyright infringement very seriously.”
In statements to Engadget and Variety, the company said the White House “did not authorize or license the Tetris brand or intellectual property” for the game, and that it was “currently reviewing the matter.”
Tetris spokesperson Kerri Brusca told The Verge: “For more than 40 years, Tetris has brought people together across generations and cultures through play and joy. The objective of the game has always been to stack with purpose to clear as many lines as possible. We are currently reviewing the matter.” The distinction matters. As Engadget noted, the White House game copied the block-stacking but dropped line-clearing altogether, leaving players to build a wall against a zombie horde instead.
Why It Came Down Has Not Been Established
Neither the White House nor The Tetris Company has said why the game was pulled, and the two outlets that reported the removal read it differently. Kotaku’s Zack Zwiezen wrote that the administration appeared to have acted in response to the company’s statement, “and possibly a letter from a lawyer.” The Verge’s Emma Roth reported that it “is not clear why the White House removed the title,” and said the outlet had asked The Tetris Company for fresh comment without an immediate reply.
What is established is the order of events: the statement came first, and the game came down afterward.
Four Games Are Still Live
The site, hosted at whitehouse.gov/arcade and arcade.gov, went live Thursday, September 3, with five retro-styled games promoting the administration’s agenda. Checked directly on Tuesday, the arcade lists four, plus an empty slot marked “Coming Soon.” The quoted descriptions below are the site’s own.
| Game | Description |
|---|---|
| Build the Wall (removed) | A Tetris-style game in which players stacked sections of a border wall to “protect the border from the coming horde” of zombies. |
| Rio Run | “Border patrol along the Rio Grande.” A spin on Snake in which players gather and deport migrants. |
| Flappy Bill | “Fly the bald eagle down the National Mall.” A Flappy Bird-style game in which the eagle carries legislation. |
| Supply Line | “Sort the school lunch to Make America Healthy Again.” |
| Trump Savings Tycoon | “Fill your kids’ Trump Accounts.” Players collect cash and gold bars, a reference to the administration’s tax-advantaged accounts for newborns. |
| Coming Soon | “A new adventure awaits.” An unnamed slot in the fifth position. |
Kaelan Dorr, a deputy assistant to the president and head of digital strategy, described the games as “policy you can interact with.” A White House official told ABC News the arcade showed the administration was “laser focused on ways to innovate and tell the story of the President’s many accomplishments,” and called it “an effort to further contrast between a culture of fun and winning and the dark socialist vision Democrats have for America.” ABC reported the White House did not answer questions about whether contractors were hired or taxpayer funds used.
The arcade has drawn criticism from immigrant rights groups, who say it gamifies mass deportations. “They’ve been playing games with people’s lives for years, now they’ve made a video game of what they’re doing,” Amerika Garcia Grewal, co-director of the Frontera Federation in Eagle Pass, Texas, told AFP. Texas Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett wrote on social media: “Instead of creating policies that actually help people, the White House just rolled out arcade games. They need to spend less time playing and more time governing.”
Most of the Industry Has Stayed Quiet
Tetris is so far the only rights holder to raise copyright over the arcade. Mary Whitfill Roeloffs reported for Forbes on Friday that Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, Sega and Warner Bros. Entertainment had all stayed silent, and gave four reasons why: US copyright law does not protect game mechanics, and the White House rebuilt them with original pixel art rather than copied code; suing the federal government runs into sovereign immunity; non-commercial political satire may qualify as fair use, which is expensive to test; and the largest games companies depend on government contracts, antitrust approvals, trade policy and tax regulation.
Kotaku notes that the administration has previously used AI and video editing tools to make propaganda featuring Halo, Pokémon, Call of Duty and Animal Crossing. In those cases the companies distanced themselves publicly but did not raise the prospect of legal action. In August, Kotaku reported that Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs had lobbied the administration to stop posting memes involving Mario, Pokémon and Naruto. Musicians including Sabrina Carpenter and Olivia Rodrigo have separately objected to their songs being used in White House videos.
The White House has not commented on the removal.
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