Another Wall Street mainstay may be facing extinction.
New versions of the BlackBerry mobile device won’t come equipped with BrickBreaker, a simple game that for years was installed on every BlackBerry and at its peak developed a cult following among traders and Wall Street executives. Richard S. Fuld, the former Lehman Brothers chief executive, became so addicted, that in 2006 he had his technology department remove the game from his device in an attempt to break his habit.
Nick Manning, a spokesman for BlackBerry, on Wednesday confirmed the company’s decision to remove the game from new devices. Still he is hopeful users will soon be able to down load a version of it.
BrickBreaker, he explained, was developed by BlackBerry in 2002 and the company owned the rights to it. In the game, the player navigates a ball with a paddle, hoping to demolish bricks at the top of the screen. Players advance by clearing all the bricks on a given screen.
The game was a big feature on the irst color BlackBerry mobile device the company released in 2003. As the game grew in popularity it spawned a number of knock offs, but only BlackBerry users could access the original game.
Now, BlackBerry is “open sourcing†the game, said Mr. Manning. This means third-party application developers can create their own version of BrickBreaker. Mr. Manning said.
BlackBerry chose to let go of the game because it wants to promote third-party development of applications. “The market demands we have a deep ecosystem of applications and it is important we do things to encourage that,†he said.
Wall Street executive Richard Handler is among those who will no doubt be glad to hear that all is not lost for BrickBreaker. For years, the Jefferies chief executive was known to play the game in elevators and between meetings.
On Wednesday he told DealBook that he has yet to forsake the game, despite the sharp rise in popularity of the iPhone, which offers owners access to hundre! ds of more advanced games.
