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Intern Saga: Trademark Lawyer is a Papers, Please-esque parody about the King trademark debacle

Take them down

Intern Saga: Trademark Lawyer is a Papers, Please-esque parody about the King trademark debacle

For the recent Candy Jam, Organ Trail dev The Men Who Wear Many Hats created a Papers, Please parody called Intern Saga: Trademark Lawyer.

If you don't know, the Candy Jam is a protest against King's recent trademarking of the word (and the current trademark system in general).

To take part in this protest, indie devs had to submit games with everyday words like 'candy', 'saga', and 'scroll' in them.

For that reason and that reason alone, the name of Intern Saga: Trademark Lawyer is rather amusing.

Over and above that, though, you'll likely have to kiss goodbye to your free time if you download this entertaining morsel.

Guilty as charged

Yes, you'll be frittering away your time before you know it here, as you take down games with trademark-infringing titles to pay off your student loan.

Intern Saga

You do this by browsing the digital stores looking out for new games on your mobile phone. Once you've found a trademark-infringing game title, you send the guilty dev an email notifying her of the trademark's existence and the game is instantly removed.

You have to find all of the infringing games before the battery on your phone runs out that day.

Hard as candy

In the beginning, it's all simple enough. You just have to make sure you keep checking over the new games from previous days as more trademarks come your way.

Later on, you have to scrutinise the suspected infringing game title to ensure you're not taking down a game from the company that filed the trademark for it.

Intern Saga

Then, a new law is passed that means the trademarks can only be applied to certain genres and platforms, making your job harder.

While you're taking the games down, a small developer will sometimes beg for you to negotiate with her or a large company will send a threatening email back. It helps to contextualise the game and give weight to your actions. Not that it will stop you.

Intern Saga: Trademark Lawyer is only available on Google Play [download] at the moment. This freebie will be available on iOS shortly, though.

Chris Priestman
Chris Priestman
Anything eccentric, macabre, or just plain weird, is what Chris is all about. He turns the spotlight on the games that fly under the radar.