EA Sues Zynga for Copying The Sims Social

[Kargathia]

Hoo boy this is like watching two bullies thug on each other and leaving the nerds alone.

/popcorn

Not to mention that in the process they're going to massively enrich several lawyers. Which is fine by me when it comes to EA vs. Zynga.

 

[SecondPrize]

Hmmm, turns out the business practice of blatantly ripping people off doesn't work so well when you steal from someone with at least as many lawyers as you.

 

[Ragsnstitches]

I hate EA with a passion. I hate Zynga with a passion.

EA is kicking Zynga while they're down...

I'm so confused about how I should feel about this. Is EA being the ever expected dick and stomping on competition when they are at their worst and likely can't financially carry out a defence to these accusations?

or

Does Zynga deserve to be beaten for their lazy thievery?

I feel dirty even trying to decipher who is worse in this case.

***warning Godwins Law in affect warning***

It's like Stalin kicking Hitler in the nads just as he he is chomping down on his cyanide pill.

 

[Allthingsspectacular]

Normally I don't take EA's side but Zynga really does have it coming.

 

[Toilet]

Well it looks like EA can do something right.

They are not completely incompetent.

 

[LZeroK]

I'm not rooting for any company in particular, I am just hoping they destroy each other in a majestic ball of flames and apocalyptic ocurrences... I can dream, can't I?

 

[Starke]

Yeah, if EA actually wins this, it'll be really troubling for the industry as a whole. The end result of cloning lawsuits like this wouldn't be trying to take out clones, it would be simply another means to stifle competition. If you're EA and you want to stop, say, an independent developer from releasing a game, you simply find a similar title in your ridiculously massive back catalog and sue them for "cloning" that.

You'd notice that EA has not done anything to the makers of Anno 2070 or CitiesXL, and probably other similar SimCity style world building games. I'm guessing, as I haven't played them, that while they are inspired by the Sim* series, the mechanics of those games are probably very different.

What Zynga is infamous for, and probably what the crux of this lawsuit is about, is directly ripping off both art style and gameplay mechanics. Indeed, we've seen numerous articles of the owner of Zynga telling the employees to not innovate, but just to directly copy things off their competitors, then leverage their huge player base to drown the competitors away.

Only this time, the group they tried to drown is a whale known as EA.

EA knows a frivolous and vague lawsuit won't get anywhere, like if they tried it against the other games, so chances are this one is going to be very, very specific, and it increases their chances of success.

I do actually. The catch is of course the chance of legal establishing precedence here. If EA had gone after Anno 2070 and accused them of cloning Sim City, it would have been two major hurdles: first, Anno is backed by Ubisoft, second second Anno 2070 doesn't look to the untrained eye like it's ripping off Sim City.

Going after Zynga, they are dealing with a company that's about sixteen minutes off being in an SEC investigation, and buried under litigation, who's stock price just plummeted, and to the untrained eye it looks like they simply ripped off the game wholesale.

If it was just going to be EA v. Zynga, I'd be dancing in the streets... well, not literally, but you know. What worries me is in six months or a year when EA, or Activision, or Ubisoft, or whomever, decides they want to take out the competition with another suit building off of EA v. Zynga, which is, you know, not outside the range of reasonable probability.

 

[Thomas Mccluskey]

I hate to say this but Zygna should win this one. As long as they came up with their own art and wrote their own code then it is a clone, something with a rich history in video games.

This is the gist of the case, though, if you'd care to read the complaint filed with the court. The point is, Zynga didn't come up with their own art, not any more than Vanilla Ice came up with the riff that underlies Ice Ice Baby. It's different, but not significantly different enough. It's like trying to change two or three notes over the entirety of Stairway To Heaven, releasing it to millions of dollars in sales and then saying you don't owe Page/Plant a dime. They wouldn't tear you apart in court because they can afford better lawyers, they'd tear you apart in court because you're just legally wrong.

There are games that are knockoffs. There are games that are very similar to one another in mechanics. This is taking Super Mario Bros., then leaving all of the art assets functionally unchanged, but changing Mario's outfit from red to yellow, and then claiming it's an original work just to cash in on something that someone else developed and took the artistic and financial risk to prove was a sellable idea. That would be a clone on the level that Zynga has ripped off with their Sims Social and Tiny Tower knockoffs, and I can't really think of any clones that are as blatant as the ones perpetrated by Zynga.

 

[Olrod]

Well I guess we have to support the ever-so-slightly, barely-noticeably-lesser of two evils and support EA. Just a little bit.

Captcha: "lost love" No, no there isn't, Captcha. Not at all.

 

[Keith_F]

EA has a legitimate claim to be self-righteous? May the gods have mercy on us all.

 

[Thomas Mccluskey]

I really despise Zynga and their whole model of stealing their way to the top but I almost think we should let the market sort it out, as it seems to be doing. Zygna is fast losing market and mind share.

Actually, since their quarterly income from games seems to be stable over the last year and their income from in-game advertising is increasing, the only way they're losing market share is from the market getting larger. Their own user-base isn't leaving them.

Financially, if Zynga's doing anything wrong, it's buying companies like Omgpop (the developers of Draw Something) and not recognizing that Omgpop is probably a one-hit wonder that will never monetize the amount that Zynga paid for it. Yes, Draw Something had millions of users a day prior to Zynga's purchase, and that's dropped substantially, but I'd say the reasoning, by and large, has nothing to do with Zynga. It's because users of free games are a capricious lot who will drop one game for another in a heartbeat, because they don't feel the human need to get their money's worth, because there was no money involved in the first place.

That said, the model under which Zynga works is similar to that of a crack dealer, in which you get something for free, but if you want more of it, you're going to have to pay them. It's a flawed analogy, but I'm in a hurry. I once saw a lady in line at a Target buying three Farmville cards, mumbling something along the lines of, "My lettuce is wilting, I need to get home."

My point is, Zynga's got these people locked up. The market isn't going to solve anything. If you let the market solve this issue, Zynga will continue to be a multi-billion dollar company for years to come, because its players really don't care what the company does to make its games; they just want more games.

 

[TheScientificIssole]

YES YES YES. As much as I hate EA, I hate Zynga 40 times that amount. All of EA's faults are shitty business practices which treat consumer poorly, and they do me no damage cause I don't buy their games, plus the people who do buy EA games don't seem to mind. But Zynga actively hurts developers I support even though I don't buy their games.

So +1 for EA indeed. This brings their running total to -1546.

Wait, What did EA do? I still don't understand.

 

[Joos]

Zynga copying someones game? Stop the fucking presses.

Very droll sir, you made me lol.

Sarcasm aside, they held down and ripped off the wrong game. This one is both bigger and meaner and is more than able to crush Zyngha in court by it's sheer financial capability.

You can toss a lot of shit EA's way and fairly so, but at least they play by the rules (most of the time). In D&D terms, this is Lawful Evil (EA) squaring off versus Chaotic Evil (Z). Also feels really odd to root for EA... First time for everything I guess.

Lesser of two evils. Nuff said

>_<

Couldn't say it better myself.

 

[thebobmaster_v1legacy]

YES YES YES. As much as I hate EA, I hate Zynga 40 times that amount. All of EA's faults are shitty business practices which treat consumer poorly, and they do me no damage cause I don't buy their games, plus the people who do buy EA games don't seem to mind. But Zynga actively hurts developers I support even though I don't buy their games.

So +1 for EA indeed. This brings their running total to -1546.

Wait, What did EA do? I still don't understand.

Basically, back in the mid 90's to early 2000's, EA bought up several well-loved studios, such as Westwood ("Command & Conquer"), Bullfrog Productions ("Syndicate"), and Origin Systems, Inc. ("Ultima"), and basically ran the companies into the ground, all three of them closing down after sub-standard releases. Gamers never forgave EA, and since then, every misstep EA has taken has been magnified.

 

[Strazdas]

I think this dispute is quite humorous as in this case both of them as well as cities xl and manym any other games are CLEARLY lifting everything from the original SimCity.

i hope they both waste money on lawyers and go bancrupt. Ofc thats not possible since EA can spawn money out of nothing (how else would you explain them still not going bancrupt?)