They counter-sued each other and settled out of court. The terms are secret, but Zynga phased out The Ville. EA and Zynga Settle The Ville -The Sims: Social La

They counter-sued each other and settled out of court. The terms are secret, but Zynga phased out The Ville. EA and Zynga Settle The Ville -The Sims: Social Lawsuits: http://gamepolitics.com/2013/02/15/ea-and-zynga-settle-ville-sims-social-lawsuits#.UfHFkGQ-Iac http://gamepolitics.com/2013/02/15/ea-and-zynga-settle-ville... Breaking: EA and Zynga reach settlement in lawsuit surrounding The Ville: http://www.insidesocialgames.com/2013/02/15/breaking-ea-and-zynga-reach-settlement-in-lawsuit-surrounding-the-ville/ http://www.insidesocialgames.com/2013/02/15/breaking-ea-and-... No, EA, you are not “standing up for the industry” by suing Zynga: http://www.insidesocialgames.com/2012/08/24/no-ea-you-are-not-standing-up-for-the-industry-by-suing-zynga/ http://www.insidesocialgames.com/2012/08/24/no-ea-you-are-no... The Ville was obviously a graphical and mechanical rip-off of The Sims, with a thick helping of Zynga Sauce slathered on top. Having worked on the original version of The Sims, and knowing a bunch of former Sims designers and developers who now or recently worked at Zynga, I thought that The Sims Social was itself, modulo the original Sims stuff at its core, an almost literal rip-off of the cliché "social game" mechanics that are the signature of Zynga's game, but that was EA's sweet and fitting revenge for Zynga ripping off theirs and everybody else's games. (But no, EA wasn't "standing up for the game industry", it was just a bully bullying back at another bully.) So Zynga copied The Sims and added their own "stuff" on top, then they got mad when EA copied Zynga's own stuff back on top of The Sims to make it into a "social game". Tough shit, assholes! Really sucks when somebody does the same thing back to you that you did to them, doesn't it, huh? The judge must have had a big laugh at both their expenses. I suppose it's a good thing that they settled out of court, so they didn't established any legal precedents that you can't copy generic game elements. So if all The Sims Social was meant to do was to screw over Zynga the same way Zynga had been screwing over other companies, then it was a spectacular success, and a brilliant piece of performance art, and parroting all those clichéd design decisions was justified! But was that the best direction to take the Sims franchise in as a game...? Well that's a different question! ;)