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Video game publisher EA has filed a lawsuit against Facebook game maker Zynga for copyright infringement, and has argued that social game The Ville is an "unmistakable copy" of EA's The Sims Social.
Both games are free-to-play Facebook apps, inspired by the EA's iconic The Sims franchise. They both have little avatars living their virtual lives in tiny houses, and they're skewed towards getting you to pay up for small perks, and publicise the game on your Facebook wall.
In EA's complaint, the veteran publisher states that "Zynga has copied and misappropriated the original and distinctive expressive elements of The Sims Social in violation of United States copyright law."
In a blog post, Lucy Bradshaw -- general manager of EA's Maxis label -- says "the similarities go well beyond any superficial resemblance. Zynga's design choices, animations, visual arrangements and character motions and actions have been directly lifted from The Sims Social."
The complaint includes many side-by-side screenshot comparisons of the two games, showing the obvious similarities. For example, in
The Sims, characters can be an Athlete, Creative, Romantic, Socialite, Tycoon or Villain. In The Ville, characters can be a Jock, Artist, Charmer, Partier, Mogul or Scoundrel.
The mimicry even boils down to the exact skin tones you can select for your character. Noting that RGB values result in more than 16 million different colour combinations, EA's complaint says "there is an infinitesimally small chance that the use of the same RGB values for skin tone in The Ville as The Sims Social is mere coincidence."
It goes on, for about 40 pages of examples where The Ville is a little too close to EA's game for comfort. EA describes the whole sordid affair as Zynga turning to its "well-known competitive playbook" of "Steal someone else's game. Change its name."
The publisher points to a 2009 legal case, where Mob Wars developer Psycho Monkey sued Zynga for copying elements of the game for Mafia Wars. In 2011, FarmTown owner SocialApps sued Zynga for copyright infringement in
FarmVille.
EA also points to how Cafe World resembles Playfish's
Restaurant City, FishVille looks like Crowdstar's
Happy Aquarium, and PetVille is reminiscent of
Pet Society. Plus, there were the times when Nimblebit publicly accused Zynga of copying Tiny Tower with Dream Heights, and Buffalo Studios alleged that Zynga Bingo is a copy of its game,
Bingo Blitz. "Maxis isn't the first studio to claim that Zynga copied its creative product," says Bradshaw, putting it rather mildly. "But we are the studio that has the financial and corporate resources to stand up and do something about it. "
EA also adds that Zynga hired away a number EA executives who had "access to highly sensitive, internal EA information about the development of The Sims Social". That was John Schappert, responsible for online social games; Jeff Karp, head of EA's casual game division; and Barry Cottle, senior vice president of social stuff at EA.
By taking this to court, Bradshaw says EA "hope to be taking a stand that helps the industry protect the value of original creative works and those that work tirelessly to create them."
Zynga has responded to the lawsuit. In a statement made to Joystiq, Reggie Davis (general counsel for Zynga) says, The Ville "builds on every major innovation from our existing invest-and-express games dating back to YoVille," and EA "clearly demonstrates a lack of understanding of basic copyright principles." "It's also ironic that EA brings this suit shortly after launching SimCity Social which bears an uncanny resemblance to Zynga's CityVille game. Nonetheless, we plan to defend our rights to the fullest extent possible and intend to win with players."
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
