Zynga Shamelessly Rips Off 'Tiny Tower' With Canadian Release of 'Dream Heights'

This is business as usual for Zynga.<p>"They would sit and look at competitive products and write down all the features and make it obvious to us," the designer says. One contractor says he was offered freelance work from Zynga, related to mimicking a competitor's application, with explicit instructions: "Copy that game." <a href="http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2010/09/zynga_pincus_copy_games.php" rel="nofollow">http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2010/09/zynga_pincus_cop...</a><p>Pincus was heard yelling at employees, "I don't fucking want innovation. You're not smarter than your competitor. Just copy what they do and do it until you get their numbers." <a href="http://www.sfweekly.com/2010-09-08/news/farmvillains/" rel="nofollow">http://www.sfweekly.com/2010-09-08/news/farmvillains/</a><p>More examples: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/how-zynga-is-just-like-microsoft-2010-1" rel="nofollow">http://www.businessinsider.com/how-zynga-is-just-like-micros...</a>

Honestly, this isn't really even that bad. There are a ton of games ripped off of Zynga that are MUCH closer to the Zynga assets.<p>You could argue Tiny Tower ripped off Sim Tower etc.<p>The whole thing is stupid. We all stand on the shoulders of giants, even other giants.

I find it truly bizarre just <i>how many</i> employees Zynga has, considering the number of products they produce. Mobile development has shown us time and time again that a game like Farmville can be easily made with 5 employees. There must be a gigantic bureaucratic they have to fight in order to get anything done with that gigantic mass of employees.

I can see NimbleBits being miffed a bit, but they have not released an update in a very long time. I tweeted @eeen and he said there is no update anytime soon.<p>My wife cannot play Tiny Tower anymore, she has every floor possible (153), 12 vacant floors (waiting for more floor types to build), 30 million coins and 250 bux.<p>Is this what an "iPhone Game Of The Year" acts like?<p>It seems to me that Tiny Tower was a great fad.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. As long as Zynga is not directly using digital materials from Tiny Tower, I don't see the problem.<p>The game industry is a massive fest of copying each other. How many Doom clones are out there? Or the Pacman variety? Or the Breakouts? Space Invaders?

this is sad. zynga is sad. specifically, this habitual rip-offery. i won't call them <i>shady</i>, which i think is a popular opinion. not because i don't think they are, but just because i don't want to have to defend that position. i will however defend that it is sad.

I've been doing this 30 years and I've never seen a title that didn't have some connection or another to some hit title. Some have it stronger than others.<p>I always say, when asked sage game design advice, that a hit game is like the center point of a circle. The closer YOUR game is to the center the more likely it's a clone. If it's far OUTSIDE the circle that it's just to far from what people know to be a hit.<p>The goal is to hit the line of the circle, which makes the circle move to include your game and maybe make it the new center point.

replace Zynga with Epic and Tiny Tower and Dream Heights with Quake III Arena and Unreal Tournament.<p>Video game companies copy each other. It's up to the consumer to decide which version is worth their money. I for one welcome some competition to Tiny Tower, especially after the game was ruined for me when I found out that setting the iPhone clock ahead allowed you to cheat the game..

If they don't like Zynga re-implementing their idea, they should keep adding features and innovating so their game is better.<p>You can't be against the patent game the big guys play but for protection against this kind of behavior.<p>edit to add: If I worked on the blatant copy, I wouldn't exactly be proud of that work.

And tiny tower is arguably just a tweaked version of sim tower. Whoopie doo.<p>But seriously, the whole time I played tiny tower, all I could think about was where was the rage over copying yoot saito?

It seems to me that the reasoning in the Temple Island Collections case could apply to these situations (with respect to UK law), depending on how closely the second game copies the first, but IANAB.

It is funny that some of the same people that claim that using and sharing other people work is ok and that copyrights and IP are evil also think that what Zynga did in this case is "stealing", "rip off" or immoral, at best.<p>Why would it be ok to just copy other people work and enjoy it, while creating something similar to something else is not ok?

Fuck Zynga, including whoever put together those admittedly tasty graphics.

game mechanics cannot be copyrighted. some of the best games out there are blatant copies of other games. still I feel for the team that made tiny tower.

Zynga is a bullshit company, they know it, we know it, but in the real world the people playing their games really don't give a shit as long as they can earn one banana per click. So they keep clicking, over and over. Welcome to the real world of internet marketing.

FYI Nimblebit ripped off others before they had Tinytowers.

This is terrible. Shameless and unsettling about their morals.

Just one more nail in the hopefully soon to be completed zynga coffin...