Tetris at 40: The Complicated Soviet Origins of the World's Most Iconic Game

Tetris, one of the best-selling video games in history, has a surprisingly complex and contested origin story rooted in the Soviet Union. The game was created by Soviet computer engineer Alexey Pajitnov in 1984, but its path to global distribution was tangled in Cold War-era bureaucracy and competing licensing claims. Because Pajitnov was a Soviet state employee, the rights to Tetris were initially claimed by the Soviet government rather than its inventor. Multiple Western companies, including Nintendo and Atari, fought fierce legal and commercial battles over who held legitimate publishing rights. The murky chain of ownership meant Pajitnov himself did not profit from his creation until years later, when he finally regained control of the rights in 1996.