This game has a real name. If you're from Saskatchewan, you already know it. Your baba taught it to you. Your family played it after supper. Veterans brought it home from the wars and spread it across the prairies. Generations of people in legion halls, seniors' centres, and farmhouse kitchens kept it alive — not for profit, but because it was theirs. Part of who they are.
You won't find that name anywhere in this app.
In 1985, one man walked into a government office and put his name on a word that had belonged to thousands of families for decades. Just like that, a piece of Saskatchewan's cultural heritage became someone else's intellectual property. Today, that trademark is held by a software developer in Saskatoon who uses it to sell dated, pay-to-play computer games — and to threaten legal action against anyone who dares use the name, even to give the game away for free.
In 2014, a fellow Saskatchewan developer named Tod Baudais tried to do exactly what we're doing — share this game with the world. The community rallied behind him. Players who'd been playing since the 1950s came forward to tell their stories. The history was overwhelming and the law was on his side. But his lawyer told him the truth: proving it would cost $150,000. His app had earned $1,500. He was forced to back down. Not because he was wrong, but because he couldn't afford to be right.
This is what happens when the legal system lets someone privatize a public tradition. It doesn't matter that everyone knows the trademark never should have been granted. It doesn't matter that the game is woven into the fabric of prairie life. What matters is who can afford a lawyer — and a community of kitchen-table card players will lose that fight every single time against someone with a filing fee and a cease-and-desist letter.
The name of this game is not a brand. It's not a product. It never was. It's a piece of living history that belongs to every family that ever dealt a hand, every group of retirees who played past midnight, every kid who learned the rules at their grandparents' table. No one should be able to own that. But someone does.
So we call this game 3-Spot. And we're giving it away for free — because that's how this game was always shared: freely, joyfully, and by the people who love it.
You know its real name. Say it out loud. It still belongs to you, even if the law says otherwise.