Do as I say, not as I do... Zynga

I recently talked about Copyright and Trademark in my Entertainment Marketing classes (you can view my prezi on Copyright here).  One of the examples we went over was Zynga vs. Vostu a Brazilian gaming company.  The law suite was settled out of court, but I found some comparison images I wanted to share.

Looks amazingly the same to me.  The real kicker is in the coding - Zynga's has a mistake that they never fixed for a building that doesn't require a road to be built - Vostu's game has the same 'mistake.'


TechCrunch did a great video showing comparisons between the two games on the same screen.  You can read their article as well as the legal documents - complete with photo comparisons - at the TechCrunch site here.



Today brought additional insight into Zynga's practices when the makers of Tiny Tower, Apple's pick for iOS game of the year, called Zynga out for copying their game.  I read about it first at Tech Crunch and I'm hoping they do another video comparing the two!   SF Weekly did an article about Zynga's practices in September, 2010.  Quotes from former employees as well as examples of Zynga's past game development practices are included and give insight into what is happening with Tiny Tower.


In closing, here's the graphic that Nimblebit, the creators of Tiny Tower, did comparing the two games.  I wonder what Zynga's lawyers would say that put together the Vostu case...