If you have Zynga stock, I'm sorry. You should've dumped that shit a long time ago. If you thought Facebook was a bad investment... *shudder* I'd guess this one's going to zero. http://www.scribd.com/doc/101954002/EA-v-Zynga-Complaint-Final There's a big ass Zynga building in San Francisco that can clearly be seen from the freeway. I used to play Words with Friends (which they acquired) and have seen the name associated with a lot of these "farm" games, farm meaning they have you gather and play an endless mission and they generate bank doing it. Among others maybe, there was then this.. Zynga makes Dream Heights, very similar to Tiny Tower: Then again if you trace taht back enough you might find this one on Game Boy Advance from 2006: or Sim Tower: Now it's Sim City they copied... http://gameitall.com/?p=3576 http://kotaku.com/5931661/ea-sues-zynga-says-the-ville-rips-off-the-sims A couple more pics from Ars Technica: But EA still has big lawyer power and is going to court. The funniest thing I read, from TechRadar: http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/web/ea-sues-claims-zynga-copied-the-sims-social-1091168 Just for fun here's that game: Clearly EA is copying them when they make a new Sim City game: Oh wait that was 20 years ago. More recently: Friggin unoriginal businesses... and some people probably see that big building and think, "Yeah, the USA is still doing great". Then again who knows how much of this shit was made in India/China or is financed by other countries/people. Ugh...
The copy-cat game has been going on forever. Remember back in the 16bit arcade days when Double Dragon came out, and everybody under the sun released something similar? And then a few years later the Street Fighter 2 clones appeared, which was ironic because Streetfighter itself had been a bit of a Double Dragin rip-off! But the difference with Zynga is how flagrant the copies are. They're doing more than just copying the style, they're copying things almost identically with just some minor cosmetic changes. They're going to be sued into oblivion.
We have this problem in my area... when we have conventions every year, this one Japanese company tries to take pictures of our stuff (and other companies) then a year later, releases a similar product that's just shitty. It's what they're famous for.
The same goes with movies and anything else in commerce. I steer clear of anything that appears to be riding the success of another product or idea. I, for one, really appreciate a new idea. Even the news tries to capitalize on the works of others. Are people really this dumb? http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/ingame/oops-video-game-image-syria-used-tv-news-segment-1C8781256
