Bizarre Creations, makers of the massively popular Geometry Wars game available through XBLA, claim they are "beginning to feel the effects" of Mark Incitti’s freeware PC title Grid Wars and requested that the author remove the game from the internet for download.

In the email sent to Mark:

"We’re beginning to feel the effects of the Geometry Wars clones on our sales via Microsoft now and are beginning a process to begin to more robustly protect our copyright and intellectual property.
Therefore, I’d like to ask you in an amicable fashion to stop infringing our IP and pull the game ‘Grid Wars’ from the internet for download.
I hope you understand and are able to do this without us having to take further steps."

Bizarre Creations justified their actions on their message boards, which a recent Joystiq post on the subject neatly summed up as:

>> Only hardcore gamers can tell the differences between these clones and Geometry Wars.
>> Clones weaken the brand and discourage us from releasing Geometry Wars on new platforms.
>> Geometry Wars is a rare example of and indie-owned, wholly original intellectual property, and that deserves protection.
>> Simplicity of design does not warrant theft.
>> Not wanting to buy an Xbox 360 does not warrant theft.

Even though Grid Wars has been removed from the authors website, Bizarre’s attempts to stop the distribution of GW clones will no doubt prove to be fruitless. Grid Wars is still available to download on other sites around the net, and then theres all the other clones out there to take into consideration.