Zynga accused of plagiarism by Electronic Arts for its game The Ville

[jackalz]

Maxis, a subsidiary of Electronic Arts, has filed a complaint against Zynga, the partner of Facebook, for plagiarism.

Bought in 1997 by the giant Electronic Arts, Maxis finally decided to initiate action against any of its competitors: Zynga. In an official statement, explained: "in the heart of the story, we feel that Zynga has violated our intellectual property for our Sims Social game."

Leaving Social Sims, Maxis had set up interactions with its popular game of virtual worlds and the Facebook network. "We have a game in which you can create Sims that can interact with those of its friends on Facebook," the company said. Zynga would have captured this idea by creating The Ville in June 2012. Beyond the simple identical concept, the accused would have taken the same design of choices, the video settings and the movements and actions of characters.

"Maxis is not the first studio that said Zynga about copying their creations," said Lucy Bradshaw, general manager of Maxis. Indeed, in January the publisher Nimblebit had pointed the similarities between their game Tiny Power and that of Zynga Dream Heights. They had published a post on the internet here and ironically concluded by the latter: "good luck with your game, we are looking forward to inspiring you with our future games."

[SecRecy]

Zynga has denied that it has copied Sims Social game from EA, stating "The Ville is the new game of our franchise - it relies on all of our existing innovations dating from YoVille and thereafter Cityville and CastleVille, and introduced a number of new social features and game mechanics that did not exist in the social games of today. It is unfortunate that EA may think that this was an appropriate response to our game, and clearly demonstrates a lack of understanding of the principles of copyright base. It is also ironic that EA make this decision shortly after the launch of SimCity, which resembles much like Zynga CityVille!".