Tetris was created in 1984 by a programmer at a Soviet computing center — and for years the Soviet state, not its inventor, controlled the rights.

Alexey Pajitnov built the falling-blocks puzzle while working at a computer research center in Moscow, and it spread from machine to machine on its own addictive merits. Because he made it on state equipment, the Soviet government held the commercial rights for about a decade; Pajitnov didn't begin earning money from his own creation until the mid-1990s.