It's no secret that Zynga has been and is being sued by other companies claiming some type of infringement. Segan LLC (1) and Walker Digital (1) are two that don't make a lot of sense to me and sound frivolous. Mob Wars seems to be the exception as a settlement was made and the issue quietly went away (1). Zynga is currently suing the Brazilian company Vostu for copyright infringement and they have more than enough reason to. Michael Arrington wrote an article for TechCrunch titled War! Zynga Sues The Hell Out Of Brazilian Clone Votsu. The video below which is one of many exhibits used by the Zynga Legal Team is evidence enough that many of Zynga's games were copied by Votsu. PetVille, Cafe World, Zynga Poker and CityVille are four examples shown side by side to Vostu's knock offs.
They didn't mention Mafia Wars but Vostu also has a game called Rede Do Crime that is very similar. The game is in Portuguese but you can see you need to pick a character class and name to get started. Maybe Zynga kept quiet about this one because of the whole Mob Wars thing.
Thanks to Peter Flindt for posting a Tech Crunch article on the Mafia Wars Loot Lady Fan Page which lead me to much more information on this subject. Tech Crunch has done an awesome job of keeping track of it all.
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| Article written by Jennifer Patterson, Creator of the MW Loot Lady Blog, The Mafia Wars Loot Lady Facebook Fan Page and Co-Host of The Informant Podcast. |
Thanks for posting! I hope all the MW community shares my sentiment in hoping Zynga's IPO is an awesome one! LOL!
ReplyDeleteYo, Pincus: How many jobs have you actually created, you wealthy fuc*ing salamander, you!
-'CF'-
The big question is.... which one is less buggy?
ReplyDeleteI liked the Vostu games...and "rede do crime" is a good example of them...maybe they can make a translate to english if we complain
ReplyDelete