Zynga responds to copycat claims, NimbleBit rebuts

Ben Gilbert — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 09:32:00 EST

"You should be careful not to throw stones when you live in glass towers," Zynga head Mark Pincus said in a recent VentureBeat interview, firing back at recent criticisms of his company's games for being copycat versions of already released games. His cheeky comment is specifically targeted at indie dev NimbleBit, creator of Tiny Tower, who recently wrote an open letter to Zynga addressing similarities between its game and Zynga's upcoming Facebook title Dream Heights.

"When you pull the lens back, you saw that their tower game looked similar to five other tower games going all the way back to SimTower in the early 1990s," he added. But Pincus' argument goes beyond cheeky jabs -- he also makes the point that Zynga isn't a copycat developer as much as it is an iteration developer. Pincus also defends against Buffalo Studios' recent accusations, citing his company's own game (Poker Blitz) as inspiration -- at least visually -- for Bingo Blitz, as seen above.

As Pincus says in an internal memo, "Google didn't create the first search engine. Apple didn't create the first mp3 player or tablet. And, Facebook didn't create the first social network. But these companies have evolved products and categories in revolutionary ways. They are all internet treasures because they all have specific and broad missions to change the world."

NimbleBit, unsurprisingly, doesn't agree. Company co-founder Ian Marsh told Touch Arcade that while "It was a smart idea for Mark Pincus and Zynga to try and lump all games with the name 'Tower' together as an actual genre whose games borrow from each other," he added, "sharing a name or setting does not a genre make." And now that we've devolved into genre definitions, we can officially declare this story over. Like, forever.

Zynga responds to copycat claims, NimbleBit rebuts originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 01 Feb 2012 09:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Another indie dev points to Zynga similarity with cheeky chart

Ben Gilbert — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 10:30:00 EST

It seems nonsensical to propose that a bingo-based game could be copied, but in the case of Buffalo Studios' Bingo Blitz and Zynga's Zynga Bingo, the evidence is rather clear. "We wanted to alert you to the striking similarities between Zynga's recently announced game, to our game Bingo Blitz," Buffalo Studios VP of product marketing and operations Salim Mith told Venture Beat. Mith also offered a cheeky visual letter addressed to the Facebook game publishing giant, comparing images of Bingo Blitz to those of Zynga Bingo to highlight the similarities (seen in full after the break).

The letter comes just five days after Tiny Tower dev NimbleBit created a similar visualization to address what it perceived as a copy of its building management sim in Zynga's Dream Heights. Zynga has yet to respond to copycat allegations from either NimbleBit or Buffalo Studios, but it's also possible that the publisher simply can't hear the complaints over the din of its coffers being filled.

Continue reading Another indie dev points to Zynga similarity with cheeky chart

Another indie dev points to Zynga similarity with cheeky chart originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 30 Jan 2012 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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