The Fight for Tetris Was a Real-World Cold War Video-Game Battle

By and large, movies based on video games aren’t great cinema, but the new Apple TV+ movie “Tetris” isn’t a story about fitting shapes to form lines. It’s about how the game, which was created in the Soviet Union, came to be sold worldwide for money instead of being distributed equally among the proletariat.

The Soviet system didn’t really allow for things like “intellectual property,” “private enterprise” or “rights.” In fact, for worldwide game companies to get programmer Alexey Pajitnov’s creation, they had to buy it from Elorg, the Soviet state corporation, not Pajitnov himself. He wouldn’t earn a dime for “Tetris” until 1996.

Policies like these meant “Tetris” almost never escaped the Iron Curtain, because Western game companies thought no one would want a product made in the USSR. They were wrong: “Tetris” exploded in popularity like Ivan Drago in “Rocky IV.” From there, it was on like Donkey Kong.

The movie “Tetris” details the war or contract that followed its surge in worldwide popularity, albeit with some dramatic Hollywood-level additions to the story. Before the game could make it to computer screens, however, “Tetris” had to escape the USSR. As any Soviet citizen would tell you, that’s no easy feat.

“Tetris” was actually owned by the Soviet state trading firm, Elektronorgtechnica (or Elorg, for short). Game salesman Robert Stein kind of secured the rights to it by sending a Telex (an early kind of fax) to Pajitnov, who sent back his agreement, also via Telex. In most states, it would constitute a legitimate contract, but not the Soviet state. Stein produced “Tetris” for four months without a real contract.

It might sound strange, given what we know about the game today, but Stein found no immediate buyers. After some wrangling, two companies took a risk: Mirrorsoft picked up the rights for European distribution while Spectrum HoloByte secured the American rights, and their gamble paid off.

But home computer games were about to be usurped by new technologies: consoles and handheld game sets, specifically, the Nintendo Game Boy. The real battle began when it came time to dole out the rights to “Tetris” on these platforms. While Stein was busy securing the home computer rights from Elorg, Mirrorsoft and Spectrum HoloByte were closing deals of their own.

Stein wrongly believed only he could sell rights for any format except arcade games and handheld devices. So Stein, Spectrum and Mirrorsoft were selling off the rights to produce Tetris in many different formats and in many different countries. Those companies sold their rights to other companies, and so on down the line.

After more than four years of deals and distribution, more than a dozen companies came to believe they had the rights to the game. Elorg had no idea it had gotten so out of hand. The Soviets believed they had only authorized Stein to distribute “Tetris” for household computers.

The confusion hit a new level when Dutch entrepreneur Henk Rogers bought the rights from Atari. He wanted to sell them to Nintendo to release “Tetris” on the new Game Boy. Believing Stein was no longer a trustworthy character, he decided to visit Moscow.

He wasn’t the only one. In February 1989, Rogers, Stein and Mirrorsoft executive Kevin Maxwell all raced to the Russian capital to meet with the head of Elorg. Only then did the Soviets discover what had been happening in the outside world for four years and solved it in a way only a totalitarian regime could: Stein’s contract was canceled.

Stein received a new contract that redefined what a computer was. Nintendo received handheld and console rights and began issuing cease-and-desist orders to other console game makers, specifically Atari. After a legal battle over what defined a computer that included Pajitnov, Elorg and even reached Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, Nintendo prevailed.

Alexey Pajitnov was just happy so many people around the world loved his game, something he made in his spare time while researching voice recognition software. He moved to the United States after the fall of the Soviet Union and formed The Tetris Company, LLC with the help of Henk Rogers, which allows him to collect royalties from “Tetris.”

Catch the Cold War-era story of “Tetris” and its escape from behind the Iron Curtain on Apple TV+.

-- Blake Stilwell can be reached at blake.stilwell@military.com. He can also be found on Twitter @blakestilwell or on LinkedIn.

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