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[Catastrophic lolcats]

Is this going to boil down to a Lawful Evil, Neutral Evil and Chaotic Evil debate? I certainly hope so!

[NewsMuffin]

They're both chaotic evil.
Was there ever really any question?

[Neyvn]

Zyang...

"Damn Boy, you gone and fucked it up!!!"

[mattie2009]

Is it possible for both of them to lose?

Yeah Zynga is way worse! Remember when they bought out all those classic gaming studios and then ran them into the ground? And how they now own the rights to some of gamings most beloved franchises and only roll them out as generic FPS games with no hint of the old magic? And how they actively work agains their own customers rights? And how that whole "zynga_spouse" thing worked out with them forcing their employees to work 7 days a week 13 hours a day.

Remember when EA gave it's employees stock options, only to then demand they give that stock back or be fired. Remember when EA made their money from scamming their customers directly and indirectly by deliberately working with known scam advertising companies? EA may be a bad games company, but Zynga is arguably a worse company full stop.

Honestly those two things do sound like things that EA could and would do, but point gotten.

[miauw62]

from wikipedia

Zynga’s seven-story headquarters, nicknamed “The Dog House,”[66] is located in San Francisco's South of Market neighborhood. Zynga employees, also referred to as “Zyngites,” enjoy perks such as free gourmet meals, access to an in-house nutritionist, personal training, and insurance coverage for pets.[67] Zynga headquarters features a coffee shop, gaming arcade, gym, basketball court, and wellness center.[68] The company is also known for rewarding employees with generous bonuses and stock grants.[3]

There are sources, but i'm not really sure how true this is.

[TempAcc]

Zynga has been known for this type of controversy since it started making games. Altough I don't care as much as most since I never cared to play one of their games or the games they relentlessy copied, I do hope EA makes Zynga's bullshit even more visible and facerolls it into having to pay a sizeable compensation.

[alway]

from wikipedia

Zynga’s seven-story headquarters, nicknamed “The Dog House,”[66] is located in San Francisco's South of Market neighborhood. Zynga employees, also referred to as “Zyngites,” enjoy perks such as free gourmet meals, access to an in-house nutritionist, personal training, and insurance coverage for pets.[67] Zynga headquarters features a coffee shop, gaming arcade, gym, basketball court, and wellness center.[68] The company is also known for rewarding employees with generous bonuses and stock grants.[3]

There are sources, but i'm not really sure how true this is.

No, it's true; and it's actually really common. Microsoft does that too, as do a lot of the major software companies. It boils down to 2 things:
A. Good talent in software creation is in very high demand; you need to both attract and keep talented employees or your company will fail
B. Happy programmers will write better code and faster than programmers who just want to leave with their paycheck.

Keeping employees happy both makes you look good as a company and will actually result in you making more money; the costs of those amenities to keep them happy is trivial in comparison, as these developers will often be making over $1000 a week. If for $50-$100 you can increase their productivity by even 20%, that's a major boon for the company.

That said, the description does leave out something:
Zynga also has in-house cooks and serves free meals to employees (both lunch and dinner). They also have booze on Fridays.

[Viken]

Lmao.  Oh yeah, Zynga offered their employees stock options, all right. Its a part of the insider trading suit right now.  The top brass got to sell their stock on the public market earlier than it should have been allowed, and made a shit ton of money while doing it, while everyone else in the company got screwed in their stocks when the Zynga stocks crashed just before they were allowed to sell them themselves.

And while I may question and even raise a heckle over EA's stunts and 'progroms' they've done, actually most of their stuff is real, realivant, and not ripped from 60+ game studios that Zynga has quite literally steamrolled into the dirt. So EA better beat Zynga to a pulp.  I want to see Zynga removed from Facebook!

[McTraveller]

I still think that society as a whole loses because of this lawsuit, rather than gaining a benefit.

So you have company A that has some kind of franchise and they only use it in market A.  Company B comes along and uses the same ideas, art, etc. but extends it to market B because company A didn't have it in that market before.  So, society is better off (regardless if you really think the product is "good" or not, it's safe to say that having a product available in the most markets is best).

Now company A gets mad because they didn't (for whatever reason) expand their product to market B.  They are currently legally allowed to then go after company B because company B used particular images / ideas / whatever associated with company A's ideas.  Company A is allowed to legally take the benefit of the value that company B added to society.  Note that this is actually a pretty nefarious thing: on one hand it sounds great and grand because "look at company B they copied company A's stuff" but on the other, company B provided something that company A was not willing to provide.

Even as someone who "creates content" myself, I think there should be no protection on the ideas or images themselves - only on instances of the images: that is, physical objects on which the image or ideas are rigidly embodied.  This means electronic "copies" are not protected, because there is no "rigid" embodiment.  Yes, this makes it more difficult for people who have ideas to gain compensation for creating ideas.  But at the end of the day, ideas are not what people pay for - they pay for physical objects or experiences which convey the ideas.  That's a subtle, important difference.

Until companies and lawsuits start dealing with that concept, we all lose, regardless of which "hated company" loses a particular lawsuit.

[Dariush]

heap of bullshit

Company A (think indie developer) creates a game, Company B (think EA) rips it off entirely, swims in money, Company A cries bloody tears. Your argument is invalid.

[Matz05]

Mctraveller, normally I would agree with you, but this isn't an example of market retargeting, it's full-on reimplementation of the same thing, followed by attempts to crush the original.

Normaly I'm against copyright (at least in its current, horribly broken and abused form), but this isn't an IP issue. This is an ethics issue. Is "remake the competitor's product to the smallest detail and apply more questionable moral policies to grow faster, followed by trying to crush the competitor and pretend you were the first" a valid business model?

If they stole non-social-networking games and put them on Facebook, they would have the defence of having brought something innovative in, but this is straight-up "like X; but with the serial numbers filed off".



Then again, the LAST thing we need is EA's copyright trolls scoring another high-profile victory with a sob story that makes EA look like a white knight.
Considering it that way, I agree with your first sentence.


Zynga is a big jerk that deserves to die. The practice of running a supposedly  artistic venture in a way that expressly forbids innovation and focuses on sniping upcoming franchises with perfect copies given more marketing is unconscionable no matter what your stand on the stupid modern copyright laws is.
It's still a bad thing that EA has a cause that makes them look good. This could increase public support (at least among stupid people) for patent trolls/etc. as a supposed crusader for their rights.

[Sensei]

Keep in mind, Zynga's The Ville came to facebook after EA's Sims Social. So it's more an example of Zynga trying to crowd EA out of the market than EA failing to profit because they weren't fast enough to take advantage of that market.

Also, I was going to bring this up until I saw miauw's post, but I think it still bears mentioning:

Zynga’s seven-story headquarters, nicknamed “The Dog House,”[66] is located in San Francisco's South of Market neighborhood. Zynga employees, also referred to as “Zyngites,” enjoy perks such as free gourmet meals, access to an in-house nutritionist, personal training, and insurance coverage for pets.[67] Zynga headquarters features a coffee shop, gaming arcade, gym, basketball court, and wellness center.[68] The company is also known for rewarding employees with generous bonuses and stock grants.[3]

...gave it's employees stock options, only to then demand they give that stock back or be fired.

Lmao.  Oh yeah, Zynga offered their employees stock options, all right. Its a part of the insider trading suit right now.

By the way, I read Wiki's citation #3 there. It's a NYTimes article "Zynga's Tough Culture Risks A Talent Drain". It's pretty contradictory to wiki's paragraph, read it.

[Putnam]

It's technically true, considiring this:

Zynga dispenses lavish gifts like vacations and $100,000 in vested stock. After the game Mafia Wars reached a milestone two years ago, Zynga sent the team to Las Vegas to celebrate, buying some 80 plane tickets and providing $500 in cash for each person and luxury hotel accommodations, according to one former senior employee.

Which, of course, is immediately followed up by:

Those who do not perform can perish.

[nenjin]

My money is on an out-of-court settlement. Zygna will surely want it, and EA is, by virtue of being EA, going to have their name dragged through the mud over this as well. I think it's more likely that they'll decide to settle things how most corporations decide to settle things: behind closed doors.

[McTraveller]

I wasn't commenting on the ethics of the thing (which I agree are pretty clear-cut) but only on economics.

Economically, having a large number of entities legally allowed to produce identical product and compete only on price (or ancillaries like customer service) is far better for society as a whole than it is to have law that prevents such competition.

While people always focus on the ethics of the consumption side: "If you use this without paying for it" is always cited, but nobody ever mentions that "I won't create this, nor will I allow anyone else to create this, if you don't pay me for it!" is in its own right reprehensible.