By EJ Afzelius
Star Wars fandom has exploded again with some crazy words from the evil one himself, George Lucas. According to him, Han Solo never shot first. As expected, cries of rape are bellowing all around. Ah, it’s the prequels all over again. This brings me to another entity that supposedly shot that figurative trigger first – Zynga. Huge fans of the dollar printing company (they might as well be) may have the idea that Zynga is the awesome sauce and of course, all their ideas should be 
spread on bread and consumed on a daily basis. Sure those ideas are pretty cool and translate to some addicting games, but sad to say none of those ideas come from the brains at Zynga.
This is nothing new. Rumors have flown around of Zynga’s unscrupulous practice of merely copying game ideas. It’s just sad to hear it confirmed from a former employee. Said employee mentioned that the higher ups at Zynga aren’t interested in anything resembling creativity. Apparently, innovation isn’t a priority. What am I talking about? The word isn’t in anyone’s vocabulary at Zynga. Copying is the name of the game. And if they get sued, so what right?! They got enough money to buy their own laws, much less settle a lawsuit.
You can be up in arms however much you want, but nothing can stop Zynga from continuing this business practice at the moment. Copyright laws don’t really help games all that much, and the only reason that people from Mob Wars got any money is because they copyrighted their instructions as a literary piece of work. Since a lot of those elements in the manual were incorporated into Mafia Wars, Zynga get screwed over for 9 million bucks. Umm, let me rephrase 
that. Zynga was forced to pay chump change. Big whoop. There are several lawsuits from other developers too, but none of their games are similarly copyrighted and speculation is nobody is getting a cent off Zynga.
The hilarious thing is Zynga sued Brazilian game developer Vostu for doing the exact same thing. Vostu’s MegaCity is exactly like CityVille, down to all the mistakes. In the end, Vostu had to Zynga an undisclosed amount. It must have been a pretty big amount since the latin company had to layoff more than a few employees afterwards. Ok, it isn’t funny at all. We’ve got a case here of a corporate version of Jaws swimming the murky waters of game development, and every new IP is spilling blood. It’s only a matter of time before Zynga catches the scent and tries to eat it up.
This is the face of casual gaming for the moment. Companies are stealing ideas from each other, and why shouldn’t they? Zynga has “earned” billions from the theft of intellectual property and there’s not much to protect new game ideas. Casual gamers really don’t care either, ‘cause they’re not the type to care about who copied first, who shot first glib, glab, babble, chat, blah blah blah. There’s no real passion there. Just a droning desire to buy sheep, build a new road, increase their mob size or whatever new victim (concept) primed for the taking. Zynga may not have shot first, but their paying their way to making everyone think they did.
[Tukkolabs]
Zynga Shot First! Or not…
By EJ Afzelius
Star Wars fandom has exploded again with some crazy words from the evil one himself, George Lucas. According to him, Han Solo never shot first. As expected, cries of rape are bellowing all around. Ah, it’s the prequels all over again. This brings me to another entity that supposedly shot that figurative trigger first – Zynga. Huge fans of the dollar printing company (they might as well be) may have the idea that Zynga is the awesome sauce and of course, all their ideas should be
spread on bread and consumed on a daily basis. Sure those ideas are pretty cool and translate to some addicting games, but sad to say none of those ideas come from the brains at Zynga.
This is nothing new. Rumors have flown around of Zynga’s unscrupulous practice of merely copying game ideas. It’s just sad to hear it confirmed from a former employee. Said employee mentioned that the higher ups at Zynga aren’t interested in anything resembling creativity. Apparently, innovation isn’t a priority. What am I talking about? The word isn’t in anyone’s vocabulary at Zynga. Copying is the name of the game. And if they get sued, so what right?! They got enough money to buy their own laws, much less settle a lawsuit.
You can be up in arms however much you want, but nothing can stop Zynga from continuing this business practice at the moment. Copyright laws don’t really help games all that much, and the only reason that people from Mob Wars got any money is because they copyrighted their instructions as a literary piece of work. Since a lot of those elements in the manual were incorporated into Mafia Wars, Zynga get screwed over for 9 million bucks. Umm, let me rephrase
that. Zynga was forced to pay chump change. Big whoop. There are several lawsuits from other developers too, but none of their games are similarly copyrighted and speculation is nobody is getting a cent off Zynga.
The hilarious thing is Zynga sued Brazilian game developer Vostu for doing the exact same thing. Vostu’s MegaCity is exactly like CityVille, down to all the mistakes. In the end, Vostu had to Zynga an undisclosed amount. It must have been a pretty big amount since the latin company had to layoff more than a few employees afterwards. Ok, it isn’t funny at all. We’ve got a case here of a corporate version of Jaws swimming the murky waters of game development, and every new IP is spilling blood. It’s only a matter of time before Zynga catches the scent and tries to eat it up.
This is the face of casual gaming for the moment. Companies are stealing ideas from each other, and why shouldn’t they? Zynga has “earned” billions from the theft of intellectual property and there’s not much to protect new game ideas. Casual gamers really don’t care either, ‘cause they’re not the type to care about who copied first, who shot first glib, glab, babble, chat, blah blah blah. There’s no real passion there. Just a droning desire to buy sheep, build a new road, increase their mob size or whatever new victim (concept) primed for the taking. Zynga may not have shot first, but their paying their way to making everyone think they did.
[Tukkolabs]