Apple has pulled the unauthorized Iron Sky game from iTunes Store

The unlicensed Iron Sky iPad game was promptly removed after the film makers complained to Apple.

September 16th 2011 – Helsinki/Finland — Last week the creators of the Finnish-German-Australian dark scifi comedy Iron Sky were surprised to find an iPad game based on their film being published in the Apple iTunes Store. The game was published under the name of the film and used the back story, the tagline and even some space ship and actor likenesses, taken from Iron Sky’s marketing material. The problem was that the creator of the game Ziiso was not licensed to use any of these intellectual properties.

“We contacted Apple about this game, and two days after we had sent in a legally valid complaint that identified us as the creators of Iron Sky, the game was pulled from the store”, said the director of Iron Sky Timo Vuorensola. “We are happy with how quickly Apple reacted to our complaint, and that our fans won’t be tricked to sending money to this company anymore, thinking that their contribution will help us make this film.”

Iron Sky is doing pioneering work in crowd funding and crowdsourcing, and one million euros from the film’s 7,5 million euro budget comes from the fans via investments, merchandise sales and fan service subscriptions. All the revenue from these channels goes to creating the film, which is currently in post-production and will be published in April 4th 2012.

“It’s important to note that we have nothing against unofficial non-commercial fan art or fan fiction, if it doesn’t pretend to be official Iron Sky material and the creators contact us about their project”, said Pekka Ollula, the head of social media of Iron Sky. “We have official Iron Sky video and board game projects, which will be published closer to the film premiere. For those who are interested in making a game or other licensed commercial product, please don’t hesitate to contact us at pekka.ollula@blindspot.fi”