Social games giant Zynga has been granted a preliminary injunction in its lawsuit against start-up studio Vostu, with a judge ruling that Vostu must remove its games within 48 hours.
Vostu later countersued, noting that it was in fact Zynga which models its own games on those of others, and that the social giant was simply trying to cut out the competition.
Zynga also added Google to the lawsuit, noting that the company's social networking site Orkut, popular in Brazil, is currently hosting Vostu's games.
A judge sided with Zynga, meaning that Vostu must remove its games Megacity, Cafe Mania, Pet Mania and Vostu Poker from both Facebook and Orkut within 48 hours of the hearing, with a daily fine of R$20,000 ($12,661) incurred for every day after that.
In a press statement received by technology site TechCrunch, a Zynga representative explained, "Zynga is pleased that the Court has reviewed the evidence and found good cause to issue an injunction order requiring Vostu and Google Orkut to cease distribution of four Vostu games - MegaCity, Cafe Mania, Pet Mania and Vostu Poker - or be subject to fine by the Court."
"The Court’s action reflects the seriousness of this matter and the irreparable harm Zynga is suffering due to Vostu’s copying. It also takes into account the need to protect Brazilian consumers from acts of infringement and unfair competition."
In a statement issued by Vostu, a representative from the company said that it plans to appeal the ruling.
"Vostu will vigorously appeal this ruling, which we firmly believe has no merit," it said. "This is a desperate and misguided legal tactic by Zynga, a foreign company with no real Brazilian roots -- a company that has failed to secure a foothold in the local marketplace and failed to win consumers who have clearly shown they prefer the superior games created by Vostu’s Brazilian team.
"We are confident the Court of Appeals will reverse the injunction, when presented with Vostu's position and its full story."
[UPDATE: A California federal judge has barred Zynga from enforcing the Brazilian court injunction, pending further hearings.]
If Zynga loses this ridiculous lawsuit, I seriously hope that they are forced to pay for any potential profit loss during the span of the injunction. Likely, though, they won't.
Well, if Zynga loses, I think there is a possibility that Vostu could sue for legal fees as well as lost income for the duration of the injunction. But that would have to be a separate ruling.
"... irreparable harm Zynga is suffering due to Vostu’s copying." Right or wrong, I find it insulting that not getting as much profit as can possibly be obtained in all parallel universes you can imagine is considered "irreparable harm". How many companies have grown as fast as Zynga these past few years, in a down economy, and yet they feel entitled to more?? What have they even contributed to society?
Wikipedia puts it at 6 million given to charity total, from a company valuated at 15 _billion_ dollars. It's a 6 million dollar advertisement campaign, intended to piss away what can be seen by a company of their size as pocket change in the hopes that it will spread good will in their brand virally (much like you are doing). What's more, they didn't just flat out give this money to charity one day; their users did by buying virtual goods. Zynga did not match. Every single penny given to charity was given by users, not a single one by Zynga. So basically Zynga's users donated to a good cause, and Zynga takes all the credit. But that's all fine, right? I mean, they did organize the charities and put in artist time making the charity items, and it's not like they profited from them, right?
Except they did. For some of their charities, until people started complaining, Zynga took 50% of the proceeds. They were _literally_ profiting off of the Haitian earthquake tragedy. http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/16/zynga-will-no-longer-take-a-cut-of-chari table-d onations/
Now we all know that Zynga's games do not come from the most stable ethical framework. The CEO tells his employees to rip off other games and outmarket them instead of competing with their own ideas: http://www.sfweekly.com/2010-09-08/news/farmvillains/ (which is why I say they are not contributing to society, they are idea thieves).
And let's not forget the famous "I did every horrible thing in the book to, just to get revenues right away" quote by CEO Mark Pincus (http://techcrunch.com/2009/11/06/zynga-scamville-mark-pinkus-faceboo/) , which was caught on video (http://www.vimeo.com/3738428)
And we all remember farmville spam (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zynga#Spam_concerns). Hell, read the whole controversy section on the wikipedia page to catch up.
So yeah, I suppose if a group of bank robbers stole fifteen million dollars from a bank and then gave six thousand dollars to a homeless shelter, you can twist that as "giving back to society" - but the net theft is unforgivable. Please don't be deceived by corporate brand spreading masked as charity, that is exactly what lets corporations get away with the crap that they do. 15 billion dollar valuation after four years of spam tactics and skinner-box game design... what a world.
15 billion? HAHAHAHAHA. Wanna bet some cash dollars that in 5 years that Zynga is not worth 15 mils? Over inflated stock value does not begin to describe that ridiculous figure.
This should put a damper on similar looking isometric games with cute characters and generic color schemes.. Hopefully Zynga will be the only makers of such games in the future eh?
As (justifiably) reviled as Zynga is, the case here seems pretty rock-solid. Check out the comparisons in the actual complaint (http://www.scribd.com/doc/58022477/Vostu-US-Complaint-FINAL ) - every single aspect of the Vostu games, from UI layout (including the positions of every specific element) to logos to character designs seems blatantly aped from the corresponding Zynga games. I'm no Zynga fan, but if you believe in copyright at all, then this seems like an open-and-shut case.
There are 4-5 examples of the exact same looking games as Zynga and Vostus and you can find the original games which both were based off of. Social gaming is a hotbed of copy cats and Zynga isn't innocent of this, except now they have the money to sue the pants off anyone daring to "copy" them while they freely clone competitors games (ie Farmville vs My Farm, etc..).
Im not sure what law Vostus is breaking if their art is original and Zynga does not have trademarks on specific game art or likenessess.
Something that looks like Mickey Mouse where the mouse's likeness is TRADEMARKED is one thing. But if Zynga does not have specific trademarks on various artworks or characters and yet the "cloned" versions are similar but still uniquely produced, I'm not sure what Zynga's claim of "copying" is about.
I am not a lawyer...
What Vostus has done certainly seems unethical but I'm not sure that's illegal. If they didn't outright re-use Zynga's code and if the facsimilies are of things that are not trademarked, i'm not sure what the legal violation is.
They didn't call their game "Farmville" or use any other trademarked works in their version. Seems to me Zynga's argument is "They didn't violate any of our trademarks but... their game is clearly a ripoff of ours, FOUL!" Ripoffs aren't illegal if you're not violating copyright, trademarks or patents. I don't see how they're violating copyrights to art that is originally produced or to "gameplay" that is the same. Does Serious Sam violate Doom copyright? Are you violating Dungeons and Dragon's copyright cuz you create a look-a-like game that doesn't violate any trademarks or patents but merely uses dwarfs, elves, giants, dragons, thiefs, warriors, etc?
That said I do recall the lawsuit where Macross creators sued Battletech over the design of the Marauder (which looked a lot like the Zentradi commander battlepod) but can't remember if that case was ruled on or settled.
I also recall the case against Microsoft Windows where it was ruled (i think) you can't copyright the look and feel of software.
How do car and SUV makers survive? Everything looks like everything anymore.
OMG YOUR CORNFLAKES LOOK LIKE MY CORNFLAKES!
And please think of the ramifications if Zynga wins this suit... any character that resembles something in some other game could open you to liability. How deep does the rabbit hole go? How many games have a wizard, dragon, rougue, warrior, bench, table, house, fence, that looks like something in some other game. Are we now playing the legal game of how much similarity is too much similarity? Maybe Game's Workshop with Warhammer will have a case against Blizzard's Warcraft when all is said and done! LOL
Actually my guess is this will get settled and no decision will come down and whether you get sued or not because someone thinks your game is too similar to theres will still be an open issue.
It's up to the courts to decide, where is the line between reasonable inspiration vs outright duplication. Personally I find the line to be fuzzy its all to easy to use these suits to squash competition.. Both companies are well funded so they can take it too the top courts if they wish. As I said the casual game genre is rife with "copy cats" and it's not so easy to say who copied who.. However if Zynga wins no doubt it will put a damping effect on all developers in all genres, I'm fine with that as long as Zynga abides by the same rules as everyone else..
It basically boils down to this:"if gameplay is more or less copied, there isn't much of a case, because gameplay(elements) are so often re-used. Copying a graphic style is ok, because a graphic style can't be (and shouldn't be) protected. Certain interaction patterns can't be protected.
What can give food for a case is if the total look, feel, interaction and style of a game is an almost 1-1 copy of another game. The game looks almost exactly like cityville, plays exactly like cityville, and is structured exactly like cityville. And I mean EXACTLY.
Zynga is a copycat too, that is true. But at least they are smart enough to change tiny details of the gameplay, and make some small changes to visual style.
Wow you whiners should really look at the complaint before ranting against the evil of Zynga. This is definitely straight-up plagiarism. In fact, although they can't prove it, it even looks like they might have decompiled the Actionscript code and re-used it.
People are whining because zynga themselves got their empire started by straight up plagiarism.
Of course Vostus is doing something incredibly shitty, it's just ironic that they're following zyngas model all the way, not just ripping off the games but ripping of the idea of ripping off what's most successful.
I don't know if anyone ever played Maxis' Sim Town back in the '90s but other than the character designs, the art assets look almost exactly the same as both MegaCity and CityVille, but you don't hear anyone representing Sim Town... I don't have a point to make, just thought I would bring it up. This reminds me of when Macintosh sued Microsoft over Windows on the GUI aspects. But all legal stuff aside, I think what Vostu did was plain uncreative, lazy and just wanting to make a quick buck. There's no originality in that.
If gameplay mechanics and UI layout are able to be copyrighted then every game studio on the planet will be suing each other for violations stemming from PONG on up. Whether it's an "obvious" ripoff or not, is that really relevant? I suppose every Tetris clone out there should be sued as well. Without exception one or more aspects of every game ever made was inspired by or derived from another game. The same goes for every other form of art.
Is it just me, or are there more trademark/copyright/patent lawsuits now in the entertainment tech industry than in every other industry combined? Things are getting crazy to the point of being terrifying for small developers. God help you if your code is open source, as then the patent trolls can peruse your program logic and fry you for anything that resembles an infringement. The irony of that is that all the closed source software is no doubt just as infringing, if not more, but because you can't see the code you can't detect the infringement.
Software copyright is great, but software patents should be made illegal worldwide.
Honest question ... what is the complaint exactly? In the press releases they are just saying, "They copied our games" which may be true but I'm trying to figure out where that crosses a legal line?
It's not a trademark case, not patents, they aren't accused of copying assets or code ... so what are they claiming, legally? Copyright on gameplay functions? Art style?
Just trying to understand the actual case behind confusing press releases.
As a former employee of Vostu, I can side with Zynga this time. We were told to duplicate the functionality of Zynga's games, from the UI to the core mechanics. Our use cases even had screenshots from Zynga's games. Whenever someone wanted to implement a new mechanic, that wasn't on one of Zynga's games, he / she was put aside. I share this with you because Vostu is a great place to work with great employees, but it's a shame they don't want to innovate or create something different, that's the reason I left.
f/551-114796-585.html
http://friskymongoose.com/zynga-games-charity-donations-reach-3-milli on/
Except they did. For some of their charities, until people started complaining, Zynga took 50% of the proceeds. They were _literally_ profiting off of the Haitian earthquake tragedy. http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/16/zynga-will-no-longer-take-a-cut-of-chari table-d
onations/
Now we all know that Zynga's games do not come from the most stable ethical framework. The CEO tells his employees to rip off other games and outmarket them instead of competing with their own ideas: http://www.sfweekly.com/2010-09-08/news/farmvillains/ (which is why I say they are not contributing to society, they are idea thieves).
And let's not forget the famous "I did every horrible thing in the book to, just to get revenues right away" quote by CEO Mark Pincus (http://techcrunch.com/2009/11/06/zynga-scamville-mark-pinkus-faceboo/) , which was caught on video (http://www.vimeo.com/3738428)
And we all remember farmville spam (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zynga#Spam_concerns). Hell, read the whole controversy section on the wikipedia page to catch up.
So yeah, I suppose if a group of bank robbers stole fifteen million dollars from a bank and then gave six thousand dollars to a homeless shelter, you can twist that as "giving back to society" - but the net theft is unforgivable. Please don't be deceived by corporate brand spreading masked as charity, that is exactly what lets corporations get away with the crap that they do. 15 billion dollar valuation after four years of spam tactics and skinner-box game design... what a world.
Something that looks like Mickey Mouse where the mouse's likeness is TRADEMARKED is one thing. But if Zynga does not have specific trademarks on various artworks or characters and yet the "cloned" versions are similar but still uniquely produced, I'm not sure what Zynga's claim of "copying" is about.
I am not a lawyer...
What Vostus has done certainly seems unethical but I'm not sure that's illegal. If they didn't outright re-use Zynga's code and if the facsimilies are of things that are not trademarked, i'm not sure what the legal violation is.
They didn't call their game "Farmville" or use any other trademarked works in their version. Seems to me Zynga's argument is "They didn't violate any of our trademarks but... their game is clearly a ripoff of ours, FOUL!" Ripoffs aren't illegal if you're not violating copyright, trademarks or patents. I don't see how they're violating copyrights to art that is originally produced or to "gameplay" that is the same. Does Serious Sam violate Doom copyright? Are you violating Dungeons and Dragon's copyright cuz you create a look-a-like game that doesn't violate any trademarks or patents but merely uses dwarfs, elves, giants, dragons, thiefs, warriors, etc?
That said I do recall the lawsuit where Macross creators sued Battletech over the design of the Marauder (which looked a lot like the Zentradi commander battlepod) but can't remember if that case was ruled on or settled.
I also recall the case against Microsoft Windows where it was ruled (i think) you can't copyright the look and feel of software.
How do car and SUV makers survive? Everything looks like everything anymore.
OMG YOUR CORNFLAKES LOOK LIKE MY CORNFLAKES!
And please think of the ramifications if Zynga wins this suit... any character that resembles something in some other game could open you to liability. How deep does the rabbit hole go? How many games have a wizard, dragon, rougue, warrior, bench, table, house, fence, that looks like something in some other game. Are we now playing the legal game of how much similarity is too much similarity? Maybe Game's Workshop with Warhammer will have a case against Blizzard's Warcraft when all is said and done! LOL
Actually my guess is this will get settled and no decision will come down and whether you get sued or not because someone thinks your game is too similar to theres will still be an open issue.
It basically boils down to this:"if gameplay is more or less copied, there isn't much of a case, because gameplay(elements) are so often re-used. Copying a graphic style is ok, because a graphic style can't be (and shouldn't be) protected. Certain interaction patterns can't be protected.
What can give food for a case is if the total look, feel, interaction and style of a game is an almost 1-1 copy of another game. The game looks almost exactly like cityville, plays exactly like cityville, and is structured exactly like cityville. And I mean EXACTLY.
Zynga is a copycat too, that is true. But at least they are smart enough to change tiny details of the gameplay, and make some small changes to visual style.
Of course Vostus is doing something incredibly shitty, it's just ironic that they're following zyngas model all the way, not just ripping off the games but ripping of the idea of ripping off what's most successful.
Is it just me, or are there more trademark/copyright/patent lawsuits now in the entertainment tech industry than in every other industry combined? Things are getting crazy to the point of being terrifying for small developers. God help you if your code is open source, as then the patent trolls can peruse your program logic and fry you for anything that resembles an infringement. The irony of that is that all the closed source software is no doubt just as infringing, if not more, but because you can't see the code you can't detect the infringement.
Software copyright is great, but software patents should be made illegal worldwide.
Wow, talking about a snake eating itself....
It's not a trademark case, not patents, they aren't accused of copying assets or code ... so what are they claiming, legally? Copyright on gameplay functions? Art style?
Just trying to understand the actual case behind confusing press releases.