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Zynga Stole Everything It's Suing Us For
- EvilTrout 15y agoThe screenshot comparisons are quite damning. Also, previously on Hacker News: Zynga CEO: "Just copy what they do and do it until you get their numbers." http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1675483 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1675483
- ristretto 15y agoIf the whole idea is for zynga to win this and claim that their ripoff games are "original", this will set a terrible precedent for all indie developers
- pagekalisedown 15y agoReminds me of how the Tetris company likes to sue copycats left and right. But regardless, indies don't care.
- tantalor 15y agoThe article is about copyright infringement, not trademark. The "Tetris" trademark is owned by Pajitnov, who invented the game. The Tetris Company, LLC (TTC) is based in Hawaii and is owned by Henk Rogers and Alexey Pajitnov. The company currently owns the trademark to the game Tetris, originally conceived by Pajitnov. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tetris_Company http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tetris_Company
- pagekalisedown 15y agoIf you look at the history of legal actions TTC has put forth, wouldn't you say their behavior is akin to sleazy patent lawyers?
- tantalor 15y agoYes, I cannot agree with the way TTC has pressured developers based on "copyright" claims. I wonder if TTC has a patent on "methods to deliver tetrominos to clear lines."
- wccrawford 15y agoI find it hard to believe that Zynga knew about -none- of those games. I could believe 1 or 2, but to have pre-existing examples of every game they are trying to sue over... I just can't believe that. It sounds to me like Zynga forgot its roots.
- smokinn 15y agoWhat roots are you referring to? As pointed out by another in this article's discussion, Zynga has a well documented history of not caring about original production but rather looking around for successfull social games, copying them and throwing way more marketing dollars and gamification techniques at them so as to make the original irrelevant.
- mikeryan 15y agoI believe those are the roots he's referring to.
- starwed 15y agoI've heard that internally, they call this practice "fast-following". I guess they had to invent some double-speak so the game devs didn't feel so bad in meetings! They actively look for small games that are just starting to become successful, since those are easier to displace in the market.
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- tzs 15y agoIt's worse than that. They only gave examples for the games Zynga is suing over. Similar examples could be found for other Zynga games.
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- code_duck 15y agoSeems like these days, ownership of an idea is based on who has more money to pay lawyers.
- ristretto 15y agoAgree with that, and this is part of the whole discussion regarding intellectual property laws. The problem is that, unless technology finds a way to bypass them, we need even more lawyers to solve these problems.
- conradev 15y agohttp://is.gd/KivR1p http://is.gd/KivR1p http://is.gd/8cIKKs http://is.gd/8cIKKs Difference? I see none.
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- voidfiles 15y agoMayby Zynga is being offensive about this stuff. Being sued right now wouldn't be a good thing for Zynga. If anyone out there was expecting to sue Zynga they just threw an elbow. Now you know, if you are thinking about fucking with Zynga, they aren't going to be quite.
- moonboots 15y agoI'm surprised Natsume (Harvest Moon) isn't suing all of these companies.
- cellis 15y agoSim Farm (Maxis)