It’s not a surprise to anyone when Zynga launches a new game and there is familiarity to it. Zynga’s upcoming mobile game is called Dream Heights and the development team called Nimblebit found it was very similar to their popular game Tiny Tower. Nimblebit consists of 3 developers and these guys aren’t flattered by the imitation. Rather than sue for copyright infringement, they decided to write an open letter to all 2,789 Zynga employees. For more details, go to the Yahoo! Games post by Chris Morris (1).
This isn’t the first time Zynga copied another game and probably won’t be the last. It seems to work for them. Joe Osborn of games.com put together a comparison of games released by other developers that “inspired” the creations of Mafia Wars, FarmVille, PetVille, Café World, CityVille, Pioneer Trail, Hidden Chronicles (1) This wouldn’t be as big of a deal if Zynga hadn’t just sued (and received a settlement) the Brazilian gaming company Vostu for doing the same thing! (1),(2)
(images from http://blog.games.com)
| 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. All material is protected by copyright law |
Is Mob Wars still around? Maybe they want our business?
ReplyDeleteand the sad is, people are still here playing mafia wars by zynga, instead of not supporting those corporate asses...
ReplyDeleteLet's face it, Zynga are scumbags and we all should have known it from the start. Anyone playing one of Zynga's copied games should know they're dealing with scumbags and then shouldn't complain when it turns out they're dealing with a scumbag company. You knew that going in!
ReplyDeleteHere's a link to a more readable version of the open letter:
http://www.fiercemobilecontent.com/pages/nimblebits-open-letter-zynga