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Zynga, Playdom Clash Over Facebook/MySpace Game Advertising
by Staff
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June 22, 2009
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Leading social game company Zynga has sued fellow firm Playdom, alleging misleading Facebook ads for Playdom's Mobsters that mention Zynga's Mafia Wars are confusing consumers and affecting the firm's revenue.
According to a lawsuit first reported by Silicontap.com and made available by PaidContent.org, Zynga is objecting to a Facebook ad from Playdom which asks "Like Mafia Wars?" and then directs users to Mobsters, Playdom's own stat-heavy social management game.
Zynga is not claiming uniqueness over the game concept, but nonetheless claims that this ad is "designed to confuse and deceive the gaming public," and that the company is losing traffic and profits as a result, as well as "damage to its goodwill and reputation."
The company requests Playdom stop using Mafia Wars in its ads, run "corrective advertising" dispelling confusion, and pay Zynga damages -- including any of Playdom's "ill-gotten gains or profits."
Both social game firms, which are designed to make money by free-to-play games with microtransactions that live on social networks such as Facebook and MySpace, have been hiring major video game executives in recent weeks.
Notably, former EA COO John Pleasants just joined Playdom as its CEO, and EA LA's Mike Verdu recently joined Zynga alongside AddictingGames.com manager Roy Sehgal and a number of other executives.
Gamasutra has reached out to Playdom for comment on the lawsuit, and will update if any official statement is given.
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I have played Mafia Wars for 6 months and there are still bugs that negatively effect gameplay currently in the game that existed when I started. These bugs have been reported countless times by countless players and yet remain.
They continue to add new content which introduces new bugs to the game while ignoring the requests for fixes.
That is why they are losing customers. Not because of some misleading ad. (While I do admit, the misleading ad does not help Zynga's situation.)
I mean if I put an ad that says "like playing (put your game name here)?" but it link to my game instead would definitely upset you if you had a good product that relied on fresh faces..
I'm not saying it's not done before, but it’s usually in a commercial where the consumer can see actual brand.. a sentence offers no identifying distinctions.. I never saw a Pepsi commercial that didn't have the word Pepsi in there somewhere. TV offers visuals.. sound.. text.. those facebook ads are just words.. maybe a non-specific image accompanying it.
I’m sure Zynga will have a tough case as these kind of scenarios are probably untested cases that don’t have much history to fall back on which way the courts would favor. I think it’s a sleazy practice to advertise that way as it relies on the popularity of a rival product to attract people.