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Tag: The Ville

  • Zynga Laid Off Over 100 Employees During The Apple Event

    Apple took over the Internet news cycle today with the announcement of the iPad Mini. The news would obviously drown out anything else, including mass layoffs at one of the largest social game developers in the world. Nobody would be that stupid to try a stunt like that though, right?

    That seems to be exactly what happened during the iPad Mini event as Zynga is rumored to have laid off over 100 employees from its Austin studio. There are similar layoffs being reported from its Chicago and Boston offices as well.

    The news first broke less than an hour ago when Justin Maxwell, a friend of a Zynga employee in Austin, reported the lay offs via Twitter.

    He later clarified that the teams let go were those behind The Ville and Bingo. He also said that the news comes from a friend and that it’s not an official announcement from Zynga. Gamasutra reached out to other sources, however, and were able to confirm the layoffs at the Austin studio.

    Speaking to another source, Joystiq was able to confirm that the The Ville and Bingo teams were indeed cut. The Austin studio still has about 70 employees left working on Zynga Slots. The company’s simulated gambling division is still doing relatively well so it makes sense to keep them around. It’s unknown if Zynga will drop support for the games that were affected by the cuts.

    It’s not exactly surprising to see the layoffs at this point considering how awful Zynga has performed this year. The company’s value has dropped considerably since its IPO and many top executives and creators have already left. The executives that are left are being investigated for insider trading after they sold most of their stock prior to the crash.

    While the layoffs at Austin have been pretty much confirmed, we still don’t know the fate of Boston or Chicago. There’s a good chance they were also affected.

    Many game industry folks (and Zynga haters) took to Twitter to discuss the rather convenient timing in which Zynga announced the lay offs:

  • Zynga Now Faces A Lawsuit From EA Over Copyright Infringement

    The past few weeks have been rough for Zynga to say the least. After their stocks took a massive nose dive, the top brass was accused of insider trading. All of this had led to an investigation and the company stripping some top executives of their power. Now they face the largest threat yet – a massive copyright infringement lawsuit from EA.

    Now, it’s no secret that Zynga blatantly copies games. Even the CEO, Mark Pincus, has admitted that his company takes whatever is popular and just makes it “better.” By better, of course, he means monetize the hell out of it. So far, Zynga has only copied small indie games that can’t fight back. By producing The Ville, a copy of The Sims Social, they have invited a legal fight that they might not be able to win.

    EA sent a statement to Kotaku that’s kind of strange. While they list all the supposed wrongs that Zynga has done, they act like they’re the savior of all those small indie studios that were copied because they have “the financial and corporate resources to stand up and do something.” Here’s the statement in full:

    As outlined in our complaint, when The Ville was introduced in June 2012, the infringement of The Sims Social was unmistakable to those of us at Maxis as well as to players and the industry at large. The similarities go well beyond any superficial resemblance. Zynga’s design choices, animations, visual arrangements and character motions and actions have been directly lifted from The Sims Social. The copying was so comprehensive that the two games are, to an uninitiated observer, largely indistinguishable. Scores of media and bloggers commented on the blatant mimicry.

    This is a case of principle. Maxis isn’t the first studio to claim that Zynga copied its creative product. But we are the studio that has the financial and corporate resources to stand up and do something about it. Infringing a developer’s copyright is not an acceptable practice in game development. By calling Zynga out on this illegal practice, we hope to have a secondary effect of protecting the rights of other creative studios who don’t have the resources to protect themselves.

    Today, we hope to be taking a stand that helps the industry protect the value of original creative works and those that work tirelessly to create them.

    In their defense, Zynga says the claims are absolutely untrue. They claim that The Ville is just an extension of their “ville” franchise. Zynga also points out EA’s hypocrisy by saying that SimCity Social is just a clone of the company’s CityVille game.

    I’ve seen a lot of lawsuits in gaming and this one might just be the biggest. A lot is at stake here whether you like it or not. If Zynga is publicly called out in a court of law, then they can no longer deny that their entire business is built upon copying competitors. EA is probably going to push this into the public as much as they can. With Zynga and EA’s stocks both slipping and players becoming increasingly unhappy with both products, things could turn really ugly really fast.

    While you’re here, check out EA’s lawsuit. It has a lot of reference pictures between The Sims Social and The Ville alongside some other comparison shots to prove that Zynga copies other developers’ work.

    EA v Zynga Complaint (Final)