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Leaked Zynga Memo Justifies Copycat Strategy

106 points by azazo 15y ago

thesash 15y ago
This reminds me of the whole Curebit debacle from this weekend. Is outright copying of design/creative/game mechanics illegal? Maybe, maybe not. Is it wrong? Hell yes! What makes me really sad is thinking about how many talented engineers and designers there are working at companies like Zynga, doing a kick-ass job of building clones for companies with no values.
- rhizome 15y ago
  I wonder whether it's something that only benefits from the economies of scale available to money. That is, can entrepreneurs benefit from copying? Is it democratic?
- pfraze 15y ago
  I'm not sure it's that black & white. I don't love the argument I'm about to make, so feel free to counter it: The only tangible I can sense with content (code, media, etc) is how it's provided, and that means that service is the entirety of our business. Zynga isn't producing original content, but they are producing a valuable service. Do I think it's ethical? No way. But should it be illegal? Not unless you want to limit how we can use data.
  - Lazare 15y ago
    Certainly the world is full of things which are wrong, but should not be illegal because the "solution" would be worse than the problem it tried to solve. (coughSOPA/PIPAcough) In this case, what Zynga is doing is copying game design. And in a perfect world...I think it should be perfectly legal to copy game design, because the alternative is software patents, and do I really need to spell out why that sucks? But it's still ethically and morally wrong, and we should name and shame Zynga, their developers, and their enablers. How about a boycott of Amazon until they yank Zynga's hosting? (And yes, I realize their isn't the slightest hope of such a thing...)
    - thesash 15y ago
      How about Facebook? I was among those applauding "The Hacker Way" earlier today, and their manifesto of making money in order to build a better service [http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2012/02/hacker-way.html http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2012/02/hacker-way.html], but Zynga makes up 12% of Facebook's revenue!
    - _delirium 15y ago
      I don't think the only alternative is software patents; if the copying is close enough, it can infringe copyright as well. For example, some novelists have lost lawsuits over cloning novels, when they wrote knock-off versions that came way too close to the originals. You can write a parody of Dune, for example, because parody/satire is separately protected, and you can rip off the basic premise (a book about a desert planet with spice and giant worms, etc.), because that can't be patented. But you can't write a direct, scene-for-scene ripoff with a 1:1 correspondence of characters and action, even if you didn't literally copy the prose in doing so.
  - thesash 15y ago
    You're absolutely right, copying creative ideas is not illegal, and making it illegal wouldn't solve anything. Unfortunately, the reality is that as long as it is possible to make make money by operating unethically (read: forever), businesses will do it. Call me naive, but I would at least like to believe that these types of practices cannot sustain a business forver, and eventually a player who does things the right way will win out.
    - ryanjmo 15y ago
      Naive.
- samstave 15y ago
  Basically the way I feel right now is that any employee associated with Zynga is just as much a slimy douchebag as is Pincus.
  - officemonkey 15y ago
    Basically, I read the memo to say: "We're thieves and I'm okay with that. If you want to work with thieves, then Zynga is the place for you."
    - samstave 15y ago
      Exactly. But what I am disheartened about more is that the general SV VC and Tech communities appear to be ok with that as well. This sentence really spelled it out: "We evolve genres by making games free, social, accessible and highest quality." The evolution Pincus is justifying here is taking a known game and making it free, or social or (in his mind) higher quality. He is admitting right there to effectively "We evolve games by stealing them and making them work on our facebook delivery platform" And calls it "innovation" That is plain despicable.
      - ericd 15y ago
        Anecdotal, but many of the people I've met in the SV tech community don't respect Zynga at all.
      - billpatrianakos 15y ago
        Whenever I hear "higher quality" with no explanation of where or how that higher quality comes about my BS radar immediately starts going off. "Adding value" and "evolving" and "making X higher quality" are all phrases that have recently begun to lose all meaning and now sound like cliche corporate bullshit. Explain the how/where and I'll believe. Oh, and it's very easily to tell when you're being sincere so if a company uses it they'd better mean it or not say it at all.
      - derefr 15y ago
        Let's make that statement only a hair more general: > We evolve genres by making [apps] free, ..., accessible, and highest quality. This is arguably what Internet Explorer did to Netscape. The "genre" of web browsers did, in fact, evolve quite a bit in response.
- cubicle67 15y ago
  would it be fair to draw an analogy to the London bus on a bridge photo story from a short while back? http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWPCC/2012/1.html http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWPCC/2012/1.html
joshu 15y ago
Horseshit. The similarity between SimTower/YootTower (same developer/designer!) and TinyTower is that they both have towers; the differences is basically everything else. Zynga's game is basically identically TinyTower with no other elements or changes.
- tzs 15y ago
  The Forbes author explained it well on page 2: "To use an analogy I’ve drawn on before, the gap between Tiny Tower and Sim Tower might be the difference between James Cameron‘s sci-fi Avatar and the similarly themed Dances with Wolves. However, the space between Tiny Tower and Zynga’s Dream Heights would be the difference between Dances with Wolves and another film set in the 1800s about Native Americans with the exact same plot, lookalike actors and titled 'Cavorting with Bears.'"
  - ericd 15y ago
    That's a wonderful analogy. I was a bit confused by people saying "So? Tiny Tower was just a SimTower rip", and I didn't know how to express the gap difference which that analogy does so well.
    - RodgerTheGreat 15y ago
      I think some of the confusion comes from people who haven't tried Tiny Tower and are judging purely based on the name and a few screenshots. My original reaction to hearing about TinyTower was "Great, finally a SimTower remake!" Gameplay-wise, though, they couldn't be more different. SimTower is a complex simulation game in which the design of the tower and how it runs is largely up to the player. Tiny Tower is firmly in the "social skinner box" genre, where most of the game plays itself, and random chance and waiting are core mechanics. The graphics are largely incidental to gameplay. Tiny Tower and SimTower have the same setting, but are not similar games.
      - ericd 15y ago
        Agreed, I loved Sim Tower as a kid, it was quite deep. I was excited when I heard about Tiny Tower via this news, only to realize that it was more Farmville than deep strategy.
mbrzuzy 15y ago
Didn't Zynga sue some chinese game that was basically a copy of farmville? And here they are saying there is nothing wrong with copying...
- jmaygarden 15y ago
  The article refers to a lawsuit against a Brazilian company.
  - mbrzuzy 15y ago
    Yea you're right. Here is an article I found regarding it. http://venturebeat.com/2011/06/16/zynga-sues-brazilian-copycat-vostu-for-copyright-infringement/ http://venturebeat.com/2011/06/16/zynga-sues-brazilian-copyc... I have no words for Zynga's hypocrisy.
kmfrk 15y ago
It must be nice for companies to Google and Facebook to always have one company to top them all in the category of unrepentant corporate spawns of Satan.
- aaronblohowiak 15y ago
  Walmart? McDonald's? Goldman? Halliburton? Blackwater?
  - kmfrk 15y ago
    Since when was Hacker News not implicitly about software companies?
  - pluies_public 15y ago
    cough Monsanto.
Apocryphon 15y ago
This is the sort of thing that leads to companies resorting to patents or copyrights.
prbuckley 15y ago
This is sure to be down voted but here I go anyway... Doesn't this just indicate that having distribution is the most important element of the gaming market? It isn't enough to have a great game or design if you can't win at distribution.
- elliottcarlson 15y ago
  Not necessarily - though there is a lot to be said about what distribution and marketing can get you. Look, however, at games such as Minecraft, Q.U.B.E., Terraria, SpaceChem, Bastion and many others; granted the last 4 now have distribution on Steam, and Minecraft has become a household name, but without great game design and having something the actual gamers want, they wouldn't be where they are now. The biggest risk is that your game, if not picked up quick enough, can be cloned by someone like Zynga and distributed like crazy - so make sure your product is better and always evolving - don't be bullied around.
- billpatrianakos 15y ago
  I'm not going to downvote you (disagreement isn't any cause for a downvote) but what you're saying still rubs me the wrong way. Yeah, Zynga's success does show that distribution counts for the majority of gaming success but you say it like what they're doing is okay. That came off to me like "Yeah they steal, but whatever it's the distribution that counts anyway so it doesn't matter who they rip off". At least that's what I heard. Is Zynga really deserving of what they have? I don't care how much logic and economics you throw at the issue, we're dealing with people here. People aren't markets, margins, profits, distribution channels or anything else. They're flesh and blood and what Zynga does is not okay. The guys who they're ripping off are the ones deserving of all the money Zynga is making off them. This doesn't just indicate that great game design takes a back seat to distribution, it promotes the idea that the fine line between plagiarism and inspiration doesn't exist and that they're one and the same. Businesses that operate like Zynga aren't new but what's new, at least to me, is seeing such a business, despite the criticism it gets, become such a media darling. They had Pinkus on the Today show or some other morning show the other day making him look like he's some genius mythical Zuckerberg type. Businesses with the rip off model are often successful as there's a sucker born every minute but I've never seen one get praise like Zynga as if they're doing something that's one iota innovative.
Alcedes 15y ago
There's a simple solution since this will be a freemium game. Have every Tiny Tower player download the Zynga junk and rate it 1 star. That'll send a clear message to any players and give a nice middle finger to Zynga. We can call the process go daddying an app. A more amusing tactic would be for Nimblebit to offer tower bucks to do the deed. That would be a lot of 1-star reviews...
- chii 15y ago
  But then the zynga players would vote it back up. And guess who has more users?
earbitscom 15y ago
I'm still not sure when this forum switched to thinking that infringing on IP (in this case, not even illegally) is immoral. If I didn't have better things to do I'd love to cross-check all these comments and see how many people previously said that copying bits is the natural order of things and should just be embraced.
- billpatrianakos 15y ago
  You totally stole my thunder! My thoughts exactly! There's such a disconnect when it comes to this and I can't understand why. When it's copyright and patents they need to be abolished but when an IP matter like this suddenly it's wrong. I hope they understand they can't have it both ways. Either both are okay or neither are.
  - arbitrarywords 15y ago
    Or there's a shade of grey, where patents and IP are a useful idea, but the current implementation in certain areas (e.g. IT) are broken and need reform. Most people here don't seem to be purely black or white on this one.
    - billpatrianakos 15y ago
      I'm 100% with you here. I've been arguing that there's a whole lot of gray area when it comes to copyright, IP, patents etc. I've seen a lot of people say that most people aren't black or white on the issue but whenever I see a discussion about any of those things here the majority of people express a black or white view. I want to believe that people have nuanced opinions on this but I just don't see it.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- mikeash 15y ago
  From what I've seen, the message here and in many other places is a pretty consistent one that unauthorized copying for personal use is OK, and unauthorized copying for commercial gain is not. Have I missed something?
shawndrost 15y ago
Interesting story! Too bad the comments are full of unadorned, witless vitrol. I don't even mind if you hate Zynga and its employees -- could you just not tell me? It's not very interesting.
- joering1 15y ago
  maybe its not to you, but if users/observers stop judging what they use or see, one day everyone will be ripping off (not "getting inspired", but copying or stealing) each other, because, well noone says a bad word so its a good thing to do.
fragsworth 15y ago
Zynga's strategy is probably not sustainable. Hear me out: The company that made the original game normally has enough time on the market to accumulate most of the users that are worth accumulating via open-market advertisements. It is likely that they hit "market saturation" prior to Zynga being able to clone the game. Zynga has a massive existing userbase. When they clone an existing title, they're able to cheaply migrate some portion of their existing users over to the new title through cross-promotion. This is an effective way to retain users, but there is a significant problem: The original company (probably) already hit market saturation. The result, for Zynga, is that they can't really use this cloned game to grow their existing userbase. They can only use it to retain some users. Fortunately for the original company, they aren't hurt all that much by Zynga's strategy - as long as they had enough time on the market before their game was cloned, the net effect of Zynga cloning their game isn't all that negative. The users that play Zynga's version tend to already have been Zynga users, and would only ever have played the Zynga game. Unfortunately for Zynga, if this is their company vision, they will never grow their userbase. They will only ever struggle to keep hold of their existing users. They need to take risks and build unique, interesting games or they will face a slow death.
- benologist 15y ago
  The problem with that is people don't care about clones, they care about quality. If you love tower defense games you are going to love a heap of them that are more similar than different. If you love physics puzzle games then there's a virtual orgy of same-games out there waiting for you (eg http://physicsgames.net/ http://physicsgames.net/ ... there's like 3 or 4 games there, done dozens of times). All Zynga has to do is get a same-game in the charts or viral and they get new users.
billpatrianakos 15y ago
Zynga is knowingly spewing BS about their products. They know full well they're stealing and we all think they suck for it. Personally, I'd be a cheerleader for them if they were just honest about their business model. It's their attempt to even try to deny the obvious that I think is creating such animosity toward them even more than their douchebagery
- ambler0 15y ago
  In particular, it's his use of the word "innovate" that enrages me.
plinkplonk 15y ago
The interesting thing about the Zynga approach is not the copying but the hypocrisy From the memo "A few of you have asked how our approach to genres relates to the situation we faced with Vostu. There are rules of engagement in our industry. Companies have to respect each other’s legal and IP ownership rights in the form of copyrights and trademarks. In the case of Vostu, you can see for yourself that Vostu crossed the line and chose to use our copyrighted IP and artwork. That’s different than competing to build the best product or out-innovate us in the City category." So copying others artwork is ok when Zynga does it to others, but not when others do it to them. See "Zynga stole everything they are suing us for Says Vostu" http://www.businessinsider.com/vostu-zynga-stole-everything-its-suing-us-for-2011-7 http://www.businessinsider.com/vostu-zynga-stole-everything-...
kenrik 15y ago
I'm so glad my gut told me not to buy stock in Zynga.
ansy 15y ago
Disclaimer: I don't use any Zynga products nor have I ever. With regard to the situation, I don't think Zynga gets nearly enough credit for its success. It is not that easy to copy software and get the same degree of success. Yet Zynga routinely copies and gets greater success. There is something there that deserves attention. Zynga has operational chops that should not be underestimated. Whatever it is doing is cutting edge and enough of an advantage Zynga can even flourish doing nothing but blatantly derivative designs. Eventually, those operational practices will spread to other game studios that do original designs and it will be harder for Zynga to do as well. But much like McDonalds, Zynga could enjoy its market superiority for a long time to come as long as it continues to innovate operationally even if it lags creatively.
- extension 15y ago
  It's not easy to crack a safe, but doing so does not entitle you to the contents.
- richardw 15y ago
  IIRC they have an app-list at the bottom of each of their games, that they can use to introduce users to any new creation. I assume they probably have ads up as well. Copying enables them to make a game that has already been proved and simply leverage their existing user base to get views. Other companies do their research for them. I think their ability to leverage their user base explains them getting 'greater success'. What could go wrong? They could make a bad copy, but they already should have enough in-house skill to make the suckiest game pretty polished. They have tons of reusable code. Tons of cash. They could copy a game but miss out on some secret sauce that makes the original work better. I think they can control this by releasing to smaller groups and fixing mistakes early, or just dump a game if there's no traction. So...what else could go wrong when copying a game?
- HalibetLector 15y ago
  It's well understood in the social gaming industry that if you want a hit game, you have to do one of two things: get an underground viral hit (very hard and impossible to predict) or you buy users through ads. According to a recent story, Zynga may be spending as much as $300 per user to be on top [1]. The actual number is irrelevent. The important part is they're paying more in marketing and ads than their competitors and see better conversion rates because of it. Operations does play a huge part in keeping the customers playing (user retention), it's true. The game has to look slick and not crash. Their ops teams must be wizards. Their design teams, not so much. [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3494617 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3494617
ryanjmo 15y ago
There are tons of comments saying that copying these games is wrong and imoral, but no one is explaining why it is so wrong and imoral. Please explain to me why, because I literally don't get why it is so wrong and imoral. Disclaimer: I don't work for Zynga, but I do copy the shit out of stuff.
- billpatrianakos 15y ago
  Really? Okay, well is it okay to paraphrase someone else's thesis paper and submit it as your own? You've changed every word but did none of the research. That's kind of how Zynga operates. When you plagiarized the thesis you typed every word into your text editor, obtained the original work, transcribed it as your own, printed it and handed it in but really, you didn't do the work. Zynga codes the games and changes the graphics ever so slightly then publishes the games but they don't do the real work. They're like every other scum developer that blatantly leeches off the success of another, barely making an effort to make it their own.
  - ryanjmo 15y ago
    But doing what you described with the paper, certainly would be considered cheating by a university. But, what is morally wrong about that? What makes the university rules, the correct rules to act by? Certainly, if you choose to go to a University you are agreeing to follow their rules, but outside of breaking your agreement with the university, what is wrong about that? Why can't we use other people work to create our own. If someone took my thesis and turned it in and got an A, I would be psyched for them and happy they used my work. It doesn't hurt me at all.
    - Splines 15y ago
      Why can't we use other people work to create our own. If someone took my thesis and turned it in and got an A, I would be psyched for them and happy they used my work. It doesn't hurt me at all. The problem is that Zynga isn't operating in a vacuum. Sales lost to Zynga do hurt someone else. In the University paper example, how would you feel if the number of A grades available were limited, and because someone copied a previous year's A-paper, someone who deserved an A now received a B? What if that person was you? There's a spectrum between inspiration and impersonation, and Zynga is clearly on the impersonation side. IMO, it's extremely disingenuous of Pincus to try to pass of his game as somehow derivative of Sim Tower or Yoot Tower. I'm surprised he wrote a memo at all, considering that Zynga employees aren't stupid - they know what brings in the money, and it isn't coming up with fun, novel, interesting games that are built upon the shoulders of giants.
strags 15y ago
For a "leaked memo", this sure reads a lot like a press release.
- Splines 15y ago
  Personally, I think Pincus wrote the memo intending for it to be leaked. I'd like to be wrong, but I'd be surprised if somewhere there's a Zynga engineer truly surprised that the design of their game isn't fresh and new. I do wonder if there's any internal tension between design and development - surely there's someone there thinking "We're ripping of game X. This can't be right."
andr3w321 15y ago
Isn't this a case of the small app developers not iterating quickly enough? If you look at the side by side screen shots the Zynga graphics DO look significantly better than the original game. Isn't the lesson here that if you do somehow manage to make a hit game you better reinvest as much as you can as quickly as you can back into future versions of the game to keep it as fresh and good looking as possible? How many updates has angry birds made since their first release? They're always releasing new levels and updates. I'm not defending what Zynga does in any way, but success brings copycats and first to market does not guarantee dominance of that market by any means.
EricDeb 15y ago
What would happen if the company that created tiny tower sued Zynga? Do they have any legal argument?
moondowner 15y ago
What is sad is that developers who make Android/iOS/Flash/Whatever games see how Zynga is making money and is copying other people's games, and they start to justify this and eventually start doing it too.
nixle 15y ago
As a small business owner ( 3 peoples) working our asses of trying to publish a game for tablets, I can't help but hate Zynga for having unlimited resources and no regards for those that actually make an effort. Here's to their stock plummeting and that douche living in a box.
n9com 15y ago
I found the whole Tiny Tower situation pretty redicolous. Tiny Tower clearly copied a lot of concepts from games in the genre before it.

106 points by azazo 15y ago

This reminds me of the whole Curebit debacle from this weekend. Is outright copying of design/creative/game mechanics illegal? Maybe, maybe not. Is it wrong? Hell yes! What makes me really sad is thinking about how many talented engineers and designers there are working at companies like Zynga, doing a kick-ass job of building clones for companies with no values.

rhizome 15y ago
I wonder whether it's something that only benefits from the economies of scale available to money. That is, can entrepreneurs benefit from copying? Is it democratic?
pfraze 15y ago
I'm not sure it's that black & white. I don't love the argument I'm about to make, so feel free to counter it: The only tangible I can sense with content (code, media, etc) is how it's provided, and that means that service is the entirety of our business. Zynga isn't producing original content, but they are producing a valuable service. Do I think it's ethical? No way. But should it be illegal? Not unless you want to limit how we can use data.
- Lazare 15y ago
  Certainly the world is full of things which are wrong, but should not be illegal because the "solution" would be worse than the problem it tried to solve. (coughSOPA/PIPAcough) In this case, what Zynga is doing is copying game design. And in a perfect world...I think it should be perfectly legal to copy game design, because the alternative is software patents, and do I really need to spell out why that sucks? But it's still ethically and morally wrong, and we should name and shame Zynga, their developers, and their enablers. How about a boycott of Amazon until they yank Zynga's hosting? (And yes, I realize their isn't the slightest hope of such a thing...)
  - thesash 15y ago
    How about Facebook? I was among those applauding "The Hacker Way" earlier today, and their manifesto of making money in order to build a better service [http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2012/02/hacker-way.html http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2012/02/hacker-way.html], but Zynga makes up 12% of Facebook's revenue!
  - _delirium 15y ago
    I don't think the only alternative is software patents; if the copying is close enough, it can infringe copyright as well. For example, some novelists have lost lawsuits over cloning novels, when they wrote knock-off versions that came way too close to the originals. You can write a parody of Dune, for example, because parody/satire is separately protected, and you can rip off the basic premise (a book about a desert planet with spice and giant worms, etc.), because that can't be patented. But you can't write a direct, scene-for-scene ripoff with a 1:1 correspondence of characters and action, even if you didn't literally copy the prose in doing so.
- thesash 15y ago
  You're absolutely right, copying creative ideas is not illegal, and making it illegal wouldn't solve anything. Unfortunately, the reality is that as long as it is possible to make make money by operating unethically (read: forever), businesses will do it. Call me naive, but I would at least like to believe that these types of practices cannot sustain a business forver, and eventually a player who does things the right way will win out.
  - ryanjmo 15y ago
    Naive.
samstave 15y ago
Basically the way I feel right now is that any employee associated with Zynga is just as much a slimy douchebag as is Pincus.
- officemonkey 15y ago
  Basically, I read the memo to say: "We're thieves and I'm okay with that. If you want to work with thieves, then Zynga is the place for you."
  - samstave 15y ago
    Exactly. But what I am disheartened about more is that the general SV VC and Tech communities appear to be ok with that as well. This sentence really spelled it out: "We evolve genres by making games free, social, accessible and highest quality." The evolution Pincus is justifying here is taking a known game and making it free, or social or (in his mind) higher quality. He is admitting right there to effectively "We evolve games by stealing them and making them work on our facebook delivery platform" And calls it "innovation" That is plain despicable.
    - ericd 15y ago
      Anecdotal, but many of the people I've met in the SV tech community don't respect Zynga at all.
    - billpatrianakos 15y ago
      Whenever I hear "higher quality" with no explanation of where or how that higher quality comes about my BS radar immediately starts going off. "Adding value" and "evolving" and "making X higher quality" are all phrases that have recently begun to lose all meaning and now sound like cliche corporate bullshit. Explain the how/where and I'll believe. Oh, and it's very easily to tell when you're being sincere so if a company uses it they'd better mean it or not say it at all.
    - derefr 15y ago
      Let's make that statement only a hair more general: > We evolve genres by making [apps] free, ..., accessible, and highest quality. This is arguably what Internet Explorer did to Netscape. The "genre" of web browsers did, in fact, evolve quite a bit in response.
cubicle67 15y ago
would it be fair to draw an analogy to the London bus on a bridge photo story from a short while back? http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWPCC/2012/1.html http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWPCC/2012/1.html

joshu 15y ago

Horseshit. The similarity between SimTower/YootTower (same developer/designer!) and TinyTower is that they both have towers; the differences is basically everything else. Zynga's game is basically identically TinyTower with no other elements or changes.

tzs 15y ago
The Forbes author explained it well on page 2: "To use an analogy I’ve drawn on before, the gap between Tiny Tower and Sim Tower might be the difference between James Cameron‘s sci-fi Avatar and the similarly themed Dances with Wolves. However, the space between Tiny Tower and Zynga’s Dream Heights would be the difference between Dances with Wolves and another film set in the 1800s about Native Americans with the exact same plot, lookalike actors and titled 'Cavorting with Bears.'"
- ericd 15y ago
  That's a wonderful analogy. I was a bit confused by people saying "So? Tiny Tower was just a SimTower rip", and I didn't know how to express the gap difference which that analogy does so well.
  - RodgerTheGreat 15y ago
    I think some of the confusion comes from people who haven't tried Tiny Tower and are judging purely based on the name and a few screenshots. My original reaction to hearing about TinyTower was "Great, finally a SimTower remake!" Gameplay-wise, though, they couldn't be more different. SimTower is a complex simulation game in which the design of the tower and how it runs is largely up to the player. Tiny Tower is firmly in the "social skinner box" genre, where most of the game plays itself, and random chance and waiting are core mechanics. The graphics are largely incidental to gameplay. Tiny Tower and SimTower have the same setting, but are not similar games.
    - ericd 15y ago
      Agreed, I loved Sim Tower as a kid, it was quite deep. I was excited when I heard about Tiny Tower via this news, only to realize that it was more Farmville than deep strategy.

mbrzuzy 15y ago

Didn't Zynga sue some chinese game that was basically a copy of farmville? And here they are saying there is nothing wrong with copying...

jmaygarden 15y ago
The article refers to a lawsuit against a Brazilian company.
- mbrzuzy 15y ago
  Yea you're right. Here is an article I found regarding it. http://venturebeat.com/2011/06/16/zynga-sues-brazilian-copycat-vostu-for-copyright-infringement/ http://venturebeat.com/2011/06/16/zynga-sues-brazilian-copyc... I have no words for Zynga's hypocrisy.

kmfrk 15y ago

It must be nice for companies to Google and Facebook to always have one company to top them all in the category of unrepentant corporate spawns of Satan.

aaronblohowiak 15y ago
Walmart? McDonald's? Goldman? Halliburton? Blackwater?
- kmfrk 15y ago
  Since when was Hacker News not implicitly about software companies?
- pluies_public 15y ago
  cough Monsanto.

Apocryphon 15y ago

This is the sort of thing that leads to companies resorting to patents or copyrights.

prbuckley 15y ago

This is sure to be down voted but here I go anyway... Doesn't this just indicate that having distribution is the most important element of the gaming market? It isn't enough to have a great game or design if you can't win at distribution.

elliottcarlson 15y ago
Not necessarily - though there is a lot to be said about what distribution and marketing can get you. Look, however, at games such as Minecraft, Q.U.B.E., Terraria, SpaceChem, Bastion and many others; granted the last 4 now have distribution on Steam, and Minecraft has become a household name, but without great game design and having something the actual gamers want, they wouldn't be where they are now. The biggest risk is that your game, if not picked up quick enough, can be cloned by someone like Zynga and distributed like crazy - so make sure your product is better and always evolving - don't be bullied around.
billpatrianakos 15y ago
I'm not going to downvote you (disagreement isn't any cause for a downvote) but what you're saying still rubs me the wrong way. Yeah, Zynga's success does show that distribution counts for the majority of gaming success but you say it like what they're doing is okay. That came off to me like "Yeah they steal, but whatever it's the distribution that counts anyway so it doesn't matter who they rip off". At least that's what I heard. Is Zynga really deserving of what they have? I don't care how much logic and economics you throw at the issue, we're dealing with people here. People aren't markets, margins, profits, distribution channels or anything else. They're flesh and blood and what Zynga does is not okay. The guys who they're ripping off are the ones deserving of all the money Zynga is making off them. This doesn't just indicate that great game design takes a back seat to distribution, it promotes the idea that the fine line between plagiarism and inspiration doesn't exist and that they're one and the same. Businesses that operate like Zynga aren't new but what's new, at least to me, is seeing such a business, despite the criticism it gets, become such a media darling. They had Pinkus on the Today show or some other morning show the other day making him look like he's some genius mythical Zuckerberg type. Businesses with the rip off model are often successful as there's a sucker born every minute but I've never seen one get praise like Zynga as if they're doing something that's one iota innovative.

Alcedes 15y ago

There's a simple solution since this will be a freemium game. Have every Tiny Tower player download the Zynga junk and rate it 1 star. That'll send a clear message to any players and give a nice middle finger to Zynga. We can call the process go daddying an app. A more amusing tactic would be for Nimblebit to offer tower bucks to do the deed. That would be a lot of 1-star reviews...

chii 15y ago
But then the zynga players would vote it back up. And guess who has more users?

earbitscom 15y ago

I'm still not sure when this forum switched to thinking that infringing on IP (in this case, not even illegally) is immoral. If I didn't have better things to do I'd love to cross-check all these comments and see how many people previously said that copying bits is the natural order of things and should just be embraced.

billpatrianakos 15y ago
You totally stole my thunder! My thoughts exactly! There's such a disconnect when it comes to this and I can't understand why. When it's copyright and patents they need to be abolished but when an IP matter like this suddenly it's wrong. I hope they understand they can't have it both ways. Either both are okay or neither are.
- arbitrarywords 15y ago
  Or there's a shade of grey, where patents and IP are a useful idea, but the current implementation in certain areas (e.g. IT) are broken and need reform. Most people here don't seem to be purely black or white on this one.
  - billpatrianakos 15y ago
    I'm 100% with you here. I've been arguing that there's a whole lot of gray area when it comes to copyright, IP, patents etc. I've seen a lot of people say that most people aren't black or white on the issue but whenever I see a discussion about any of those things here the majority of people express a black or white view. I want to believe that people have nuanced opinions on this but I just don't see it.
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mikeash 15y ago
From what I've seen, the message here and in many other places is a pretty consistent one that unauthorized copying for personal use is OK, and unauthorized copying for commercial gain is not. Have I missed something?

shawndrost 15y ago

Interesting story! Too bad the comments are full of unadorned, witless vitrol. I don't even mind if you hate Zynga and its employees -- could you just not tell me? It's not very interesting.

joering1 15y ago
maybe its not to you, but if users/observers stop judging what they use or see, one day everyone will be ripping off (not "getting inspired", but copying or stealing) each other, because, well noone says a bad word so its a good thing to do.

fragsworth 15y ago

Zynga's strategy is probably not sustainable. Hear me out: The company that made the original game normally has enough time on the market to accumulate most of the users that are worth accumulating via open-market advertisements. It is likely that they hit "market saturation" prior to Zynga being able to clone the game. Zynga has a massive existing userbase. When they clone an existing title, they're able to cheaply migrate some portion of their existing users over to the new title through cross-promotion. This is an effective way to retain users, but there is a significant problem: The original company (probably) already hit market saturation. The result, for Zynga, is that they can't really use this cloned game to grow their existing userbase. They can only use it to retain some users. Fortunately for the original company, they aren't hurt all that much by Zynga's strategy - as long as they had enough time on the market before their game was cloned, the net effect of Zynga cloning their game isn't all that negative. The users that play Zynga's version tend to already have been Zynga users, and would only ever have played the Zynga game. Unfortunately for Zynga, if this is their company vision, they will never grow their userbase. They will only ever struggle to keep hold of their existing users. They need to take risks and build unique, interesting games or they will face a slow death.

benologist 15y ago
The problem with that is people don't care about clones, they care about quality. If you love tower defense games you are going to love a heap of them that are more similar than different. If you love physics puzzle games then there's a virtual orgy of same-games out there waiting for you (eg http://physicsgames.net/ http://physicsgames.net/ ... there's like 3 or 4 games there, done dozens of times). All Zynga has to do is get a same-game in the charts or viral and they get new users.

billpatrianakos 15y ago

Zynga is knowingly spewing BS about their products. They know full well they're stealing and we all think they suck for it. Personally, I'd be a cheerleader for them if they were just honest about their business model. It's their attempt to even try to deny the obvious that I think is creating such animosity toward them even more than their douchebagery

ambler0 15y ago
In particular, it's his use of the word "innovate" that enrages me.

plinkplonk 15y ago

The interesting thing about the Zynga approach is not the copying but the hypocrisy From the memo "A few of you have asked how our approach to genres relates to the situation we faced with Vostu. There are rules of engagement in our industry. Companies have to respect each other’s legal and IP ownership rights in the form of copyrights and trademarks. In the case of Vostu, you can see for yourself that Vostu crossed the line and chose to use our copyrighted IP and artwork. That’s different than competing to build the best product or out-innovate us in the City category." So copying others artwork is ok when Zynga does it to others, but not when others do it to them. See "Zynga stole everything they are suing us for Says Vostu" http://www.businessinsider.com/vostu-zynga-stole-everything-its-suing-us-for-2011-7 http://www.businessinsider.com/vostu-zynga-stole-everything-...

kenrik 15y ago

I'm so glad my gut told me not to buy stock in Zynga.

ansy 15y ago

Disclaimer: I don't use any Zynga products nor have I ever. With regard to the situation, I don't think Zynga gets nearly enough credit for its success. It is not that easy to copy software and get the same degree of success. Yet Zynga routinely copies and gets greater success. There is something there that deserves attention. Zynga has operational chops that should not be underestimated. Whatever it is doing is cutting edge and enough of an advantage Zynga can even flourish doing nothing but blatantly derivative designs. Eventually, those operational practices will spread to other game studios that do original designs and it will be harder for Zynga to do as well. But much like McDonalds, Zynga could enjoy its market superiority for a long time to come as long as it continues to innovate operationally even if it lags creatively.

extension 15y ago
It's not easy to crack a safe, but doing so does not entitle you to the contents.
richardw 15y ago
IIRC they have an app-list at the bottom of each of their games, that they can use to introduce users to any new creation. I assume they probably have ads up as well. Copying enables them to make a game that has already been proved and simply leverage their existing user base to get views. Other companies do their research for them. I think their ability to leverage their user base explains them getting 'greater success'. What could go wrong? They could make a bad copy, but they already should have enough in-house skill to make the suckiest game pretty polished. They have tons of reusable code. Tons of cash. They could copy a game but miss out on some secret sauce that makes the original work better. I think they can control this by releasing to smaller groups and fixing mistakes early, or just dump a game if there's no traction. So...what else could go wrong when copying a game?
HalibetLector 15y ago
It's well understood in the social gaming industry that if you want a hit game, you have to do one of two things: get an underground viral hit (very hard and impossible to predict) or you buy users through ads. According to a recent story, Zynga may be spending as much as $300 per user to be on top [1]. The actual number is irrelevent. The important part is they're paying more in marketing and ads than their competitors and see better conversion rates because of it. Operations does play a huge part in keeping the customers playing (user retention), it's true. The game has to look slick and not crash. Their ops teams must be wizards. Their design teams, not so much. [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3494617 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3494617

ryanjmo 15y ago

There are tons of comments saying that copying these games is wrong and imoral, but no one is explaining why it is so wrong and imoral. Please explain to me why, because I literally don't get why it is so wrong and imoral. Disclaimer: I don't work for Zynga, but I do copy the shit out of stuff.

billpatrianakos 15y ago
Really? Okay, well is it okay to paraphrase someone else's thesis paper and submit it as your own? You've changed every word but did none of the research. That's kind of how Zynga operates. When you plagiarized the thesis you typed every word into your text editor, obtained the original work, transcribed it as your own, printed it and handed it in but really, you didn't do the work. Zynga codes the games and changes the graphics ever so slightly then publishes the games but they don't do the real work. They're like every other scum developer that blatantly leeches off the success of another, barely making an effort to make it their own.
- ryanjmo 15y ago
  But doing what you described with the paper, certainly would be considered cheating by a university. But, what is morally wrong about that? What makes the university rules, the correct rules to act by? Certainly, if you choose to go to a University you are agreeing to follow their rules, but outside of breaking your agreement with the university, what is wrong about that? Why can't we use other people work to create our own. If someone took my thesis and turned it in and got an A, I would be psyched for them and happy they used my work. It doesn't hurt me at all.
  - Splines 15y ago
    Why can't we use other people work to create our own. If someone took my thesis and turned it in and got an A, I would be psyched for them and happy they used my work. It doesn't hurt me at all. The problem is that Zynga isn't operating in a vacuum. Sales lost to Zynga do hurt someone else. In the University paper example, how would you feel if the number of A grades available were limited, and because someone copied a previous year's A-paper, someone who deserved an A now received a B? What if that person was you? There's a spectrum between inspiration and impersonation, and Zynga is clearly on the impersonation side. IMO, it's extremely disingenuous of Pincus to try to pass of his game as somehow derivative of Sim Tower or Yoot Tower. I'm surprised he wrote a memo at all, considering that Zynga employees aren't stupid - they know what brings in the money, and it isn't coming up with fun, novel, interesting games that are built upon the shoulders of giants.

strags 15y ago

For a "leaked memo", this sure reads a lot like a press release.

Splines 15y ago
Personally, I think Pincus wrote the memo intending for it to be leaked. I'd like to be wrong, but I'd be surprised if somewhere there's a Zynga engineer truly surprised that the design of their game isn't fresh and new. I do wonder if there's any internal tension between design and development - surely there's someone there thinking "We're ripping of game X. This can't be right."

andr3w321 15y ago

Isn't this a case of the small app developers not iterating quickly enough? If you look at the side by side screen shots the Zynga graphics DO look significantly better than the original game. Isn't the lesson here that if you do somehow manage to make a hit game you better reinvest as much as you can as quickly as you can back into future versions of the game to keep it as fresh and good looking as possible? How many updates has angry birds made since their first release? They're always releasing new levels and updates. I'm not defending what Zynga does in any way, but success brings copycats and first to market does not guarantee dominance of that market by any means.

EricDeb 15y ago

What would happen if the company that created tiny tower sued Zynga? Do they have any legal argument?

moondowner 15y ago

What is sad is that developers who make Android/iOS/Flash/Whatever games see how Zynga is making money and is copying other people's games, and they start to justify this and eventually start doing it too.

nixle 15y ago

As a small business owner ( 3 peoples) working our asses of trying to publish a game for tablets, I can't help but hate Zynga for having unlimited resources and no regards for those that actually make an effort. Here's to their stock plummeting and that douche living in a box.

n9com 15y ago

I found the whole Tiny Tower situation pretty redicolous. Tiny Tower clearly copied a lot of concepts from games in the genre before it.