Zynga, Nimblebit, and Tiny Tower
polycounter lvl 13
Hey, anyone knows full story behind this?
http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/24/tiny-tower-developers-call-out-zynga-for-their-look-alike-game/
according to this article Zynga made attempt to buy Nimblebit and they refused.
Would like to hear Zynga's version of events, if there is such
If stuff above is true, the whole situation is alarming, if you're successful indie developer making money of something original, there's a big chance a big player steps up and cuts a chunk of your market by making the same shit but with more resource behind it.
On the other side, for example, why there's still no AAA Minecraft clone yet, maybe there's a way to protect your project from being ripped off?
http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/24/tiny-tower-developers-call-out-zynga-for-their-look-alike-game/
according to this article Zynga made attempt to buy Nimblebit and they refused.
Would like to hear Zynga's version of events, if there is such
If stuff above is true, the whole situation is alarming, if you're successful indie developer making money of something original, there's a big chance a big player steps up and cuts a chunk of your market by making the same shit but with more resource behind it.
On the other side, for example, why there's still no AAA Minecraft clone yet, maybe there's a way to protect your project from being ripped off?
Replies
Probably because its hard to monetize a minecraft clone, I mean minecraft doesnt have obvious in app purchases its just a good game, all these other ios/facebook social games do.
As a person just starting in the indie scene I'd hate to think my ideas might get copied by a larger company only doing it so they can take away some of my business. Admittedly our game is a sort of copy of other games mixed together to create a new experience. Very few things are original these days. But to just straight up copy something else.....gah! Sickens me...
Also the original version looks nicer imo. I'm a pixel fan. If i had an iphone i'd buy it.
I will stop playing Words with friends in protest of this.
Minecraft is the AAA version of Minecraft. You can bet Zynga have a minecraft style game ready for Facebook though.
why? who made wordfeud?
Zynga wouldn't have had a minecraft clone because the development costs would have been too high. Most of their games have absolute minimal development overhead.
What's this about some sort of IP protection law?
You will see that most of the last request require Temple-Run games like.
Zynga have been sued numerous times, not only for copying games, but also for stealing the source code. They always just settle for an "undisclosed amount".
Best (and most hilariously ironic) example is when they tried to acquire the developer of MyFarm - the acquisition fell through, but they obtained the source code of MyFarm from the original developer. Six weeks after negotiations fell through (and months after the release of MyFarm), FarmVille, an almost verbatim clone appeared. The hilariously ironic part is where Zynga later sued developer Vostu for apparently ripping off CityVille - you know, that game derived from FarmVille which in itself is not only a copycat of another developers game, but actually stole the source code from it too!
Zynga: 3,000 employes
3 developers
2997 lawyers
Thats seriously the way they conduct business. Either they blatently rip off somebody else and make huge profit, or they blatently rip off somebody else and make huge profit and get sued and settle out of court for an amount that is minuscule compared to their huge profit.
I hate to rag on them because I have a few friends that work there, but I hate that they can so freely feed off of Indie developers who don't have the resources or marketing ability that Zynga does.
Did you know that Zynga also has an arm that sells goods for charitable non-profit? The best part is that it keeps 50% of the donations (over $6 million to date).
They're also the only company I've ever heard of that sells in-game currency in quantities of $500 or more via Western Union wire transfer. That's just fucking shady.
http://www.lostgarden.com/2011/11/plagiarism-as-moral-choice.html
ITs sad that this happens, games arent the first industry to get clones though, and I can imagine it hurts a 3 man team to see something they've put together get ripped off by a big company.
It would have been interesting to see the dicussion between Zynga and Niblebit, as I wonder why the buy out broke down..
A good position to be in would be to sell and retain royalty rights. then go work on something new.
Oh really? I didn't know they also stole the source of the game... Sweet baby raptor jebus! I've heard horror stories about working there, but bloody hell...
Food on the table aside, I personally couldn't live with myself if I were asked to steal actual content (code, art, sound, whatever) from another game to put it in a blatant copy.
On the charity "cut", that's just fucking horrible. Do you have some sources for that? I'd love to know more.
edit: @roflness: Why would selling with royality retainment be a good idea? Why would any self respecting developer have their brainchild get unevitably raped by the likes of Zynga?
http://gigaom.com/2010/03/04/zynga-haiti-donations/
You'll find better sources. In some cases they never stated just how much of the 'proceeds' went to the cause.
In most cases, even if they want to fight it, they still can't do anything about it. Zynga has way more money and way more resources than pretty much any indie company. And that is the reason why I say that they have 3 developers and 2997 lawyers..because beating the little guy to a pulp seems to be their business model. If you don't sell the rights, you go bankrupt trying to fight them.
I see what you did there.
Ofcourse, "bleed'em dry, boys!" unfortunately seems to be the modus operandi of Zynga. A sad practice indeed.
I can only hope this age of cloning the shit out of each other will end soon, because it is seriously hurting our industry imho.
because unless the developers are giving away the game for free they are doing it as a commercial venture. And as such, one should always be open to the possibility of sale/merger/acquisition. This is a fundamental piece of most industries.
If you're a 3 man crew and have a product that a big company is interested in selling and retaining royalty rights is a much better situation than being cloned and left out in the cold. And we aren't just talking lawyers, we are also talking distribution, advertising.. none of which a 3 man team have.
And cloning will never go away its a symptom of a free market.
I will continue building my Tiny Tower all the way to the heavens. I hope those 3 guys got that money while the money was good.
Of course, I would also never play anything from Zynga.
It is no different than what every other facebook, mobile freemium title out there is doing. I don't know, it seems like there is a lot of high horse prentiousness / internet rage over this. Oh and a jab at GameLoft of course.
It's like Sony's dirty tactic with the Ps3 homebrew scene legal battles. They didn't win in court; they forced settlement. They did this by creating suits in multiple countries, to force the individuals in question to constantly represent themselves in court across the globe - both financially ruining them, and of course physically draining them. It's hard to be anything other than exhausted if you need to be 9000km away from where you are for some pressing matter every other day.
Because there are the companies that know the law too well and knows how to traverse the dick-swamps of cloning, it's fully legal but can be very damaging PR-wise, which is something these companies will learn the hard way eventually.
It's basically as close as you can get towards plagiarism without actually doing anything illegal, it's fully natural of the internet to react this way, and in no way pretentious or unwarranted.
Any Gameloft connections will be hard to avoid due to their obvious involvement in these types of things, a situation they put themselves in.
Its not like this is the first time somebody ever noticed:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=87012
I mean, sure, lots of games borrow from each other, but what they do is pretty blatent...shortly after a game hits a market, they make the exact same thing, put it on the same market, and use their marketing/word of mouth/brand muscle to smother the original one into oblivion. If the small company doesn't like it than they can either go bankrupt trying to fight in court or accept a small out of court settlement from zynga. Or they can do nothing and watch their sales go down in the toilet.
http://imgur.com/ajaYt
Pretty much the same comment as:
"But Minecraft was a clone of infiminer" whenever a pure carbon copy minecraft clone pops up and someone comments on it.
Sim tower, and corporation inc. and tiny tower are similar games, but quite different, dream heights is a pure copy with elements shifted around but gameplay nearly intact, this is the big difference.
"War Hammer was cloned and made in to something virtual, that we call War craft."
Ofcourse every game that is copy and pasted is going to be similar, but very different. I love it when people use these 2 words loosely in one sentence. If they were similar but similar, than there will be no competition. Instead, there will be a serious law suite against the dev team who copied the game.
Its better not to start such arguments. Ofcourse some fans may regret this action, and give out negative reviews. The news will fly around for about a week to a month max, than no one will give a damn.
You can count games that were copied from other games, you can even whine about someone stole your game idea or you can improve your game and provide more to the players.
Which is why you can't copyright gameplay or ideas, just names and creations.
It's a double-edged sword, since you can have games that iterate on games to become better, but at the same time you will get games that are essentially the same game.
Zynga is not trying to make a better game, they're selling what is essentially the same game but with more marketing to push it.
There are countless ways to improve on tiny tower, and people are not only free to do it, but they're even often encouraged to do so for healthy competition.
Mostly it is just Nimblebit pointing out that their 3 guys are way better than Zynga's 2000+ and that if you want to play a game like that it's out already.
With quite some heavy sarcasm, they weren't genuinely thanking zynga :P
But true about it not being a complaint, just a general sarcastic and funny image.
You just missed the point of what I posted. Royally.
http://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/dream-heights/id477752455?mt=8
One star !! and a kind comment o_<
Really dunno if Apple can be aware of it.