Zynga responds to cloning accusations

[garyopa]

Zynga Boss: 'We don't need to be first to market. We need to be the best.'



The Zynga CEO denies they have copied games, but also makes some controversial declarations.

Zynga CEO, Mark Pincus, finally addressed the recent cloning accusations to his social gaming giant.

If you remember, independent developer Nimblebit, accused Zynga of cloning their popular iOS game Tiny Tower, beign the Zynga's Dream Heights game extremely similar to theirs. However, that was only one of the few recent copy accusations. There was another one: Buffalo Studios spotted the similarities between a social gaming bingo game and Zynga's Bingo Blitz game.

Pincus sent out a company wide email detailing the company's stance:

"We don't need to be first to market. We need to be the best in market," it read.

"There are genres that we're going to enter because we know our players are interested in them and because we want and need to be where players are. We evolve genres by making games free, social, accessible and highest quality."

He said the game Tiny Tower wasn't a new idea and was just as guilty of borrowing ideas from other developers:

"With regard to Dream Heights and the tower genre, it's important to note that this category has existed since 1994 with games like Sim Tower and was more recently popularized in China with Tower of Babel in 2009 which achieved 15 million DAUs," he wrote.

"On iOS there has been Yoot Tower, Tower Up, Tower Town, Tower Blocks and Tiny Tower. Just as our games, mechanics and social innovations have inspired and accelerated the game industry, its 30 year body of work has inspired us too.

"And, this has always been the case for our company and the rest of the industry. Zynga Poker, FarmVille, CityVille and Words with Friends, none of these games were the first to market in their category but we made them the most fun and social, and the most popular.

"Our teams continue to build and improve these games every week which has been an important part of our success model. We run our games as a live service and we continue to iterate, innovate and improve on them to give our players the best possible experience."

It's normal they are now defending by theirselves, but seems their arguments aren't at all convincing!

NEWS SOURCE #1: Zynga boss addresses cloning accusations (via) EuroGamer
NEWS SOURCE #2: Zynga Mark Pincus copycat interview (via) VentureBeat

Our thanks to 'Gauss' for following up on this on-going news story!

[billysastard]

didnt they just set their lawyers on another company for copying one of their games? hypocrisy anyone?