Gamers understand and, often, embrace the similarities in games along with the features that set them apart. We aren’t, however, accepting of complete, blatant ripoffs, nor should we be. Simply reskinning successful games is a deplorable practice that somehow manages to happen without repercussion all too often. The latest perpetrator is social game giant Zynga.
You would think that after Mafia Wars, Farmville and their other popular games being copied ad nauseum that Zynga would be sensitive to this. The formats they made popular have been generously “borrowed” as a quick cash-in by so many companies. Instead of taking the just path, the company has not only decided to pay it forward, but drop pretense all together. Unfortunately, they chose the wrong mark.
Details about Zynga’s next title, Dream Heights, have started to emerge and the game looks more than a little familiar. The stark similarities (and by “similarities,” I mean “identical in every way”) to Tiny Tower immediately caught the attention of Nimblebit, who put together a snarky and enlightening response (see image on Page 1).
This is clearly a case of David and Goliath, with Zynga boasting over 2,500 employees, stomping all over the intellectual property rights of Nimblebit and its staff of three.
We reached out to Zynga for comment, but as of publishing, not one of the thousands of employees at the giant responded to us. So, here’s some speculation on what could possibly be going through their heads.
- The least offensive scenario is that someone at Zynga pitched the idea for Dream Heights without the higher-ups being aware of Tiny Tower. If this is the case, the game should be scrapped or significantly changed and the infringing employees fired. Likelihood: None. At all. According to Ian Marsh, one of the three NimbleBit team members, Zynga tried to acquire them and failed.
- The images from Dream Heights that we’ve seen so far only tell part of the picture. The game uses many of the same concepts, but there are enough differentiating features that we haven’t seen yet that make it a knock-off and not a complete rip-off. Likelihood: Possible, but not likely.
- Zynga is reeling from its miserable IPO last month. The stock price dropped 5% on the day. It would have been more, according to analysts, except that underwriters made a “stabilizing bid.”1 There is speculation that the IPO didn’t go too well because investors are concerned about a limited life expectancy for the type of microtransactions that fuel the Zynga machine. The company could be looking for a fast, big hit. What better target than a small company with three employees that would have a hard time going up against Zynga’s legal team in court? Likelihood: High
Only time will tell whether Zynga will make changes to the game or, if not, possibly find themselves in court. Regardless, this is going to do nothing to help the company’s image, especially among core gamers and those with cluttered Facebook walls. We’ll be keeping our eyes on Dream Heights and will further update this story as information emerges.
1”Zynga IPO Goes Splatville. What Went Wrong?” Forbes.com. Forbes. 12/16/2011. Web.
