Posted on Monday 30-Jan-2012 12:23 PM

Zynga hit with another plagiarism claim

This time Zynga Bingo comes under fire

By Tamoor Hussain for computerandvideogames.com

Buffalo Studios has accused casual games giant Zynga of copying one of its titles in the development of Zynga Bingo.

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In an open message to Zynga, Buffalo Studios said it is "moved that your new game was so inspired by our innovative product Bingo Blitz."

"Bingo Blitz has been growing throughout the past year and has obviously earned the attention of titanic forces in the industry," it continued.

Both the tone of the message as well as the format is inspired by Nimblebit's actions last week, when it called out the FarmVille creator for cloning 'Dream Heights' and releasing it as 'Tiny Tower' for the iOS.

Like Nimblebit's message, Buffalo Studios points out the gulf between the size of the two studios, with Zynga numbering in the thousands and Buffalo being a relatively small outfit in comparison.

"Please tell your thousands of employees and shareholders that we hope they enjoy playing the games we're cooking up next!

Sincerely, The Herd (and the rest of the indie world)

PS - As you can see, NimbleBit inspires us too!"

Last year Zynga was hit with a lawsuit by SocialApps, developer of myFarm, which accusing it of using stolen source code to create FarmVille.

[ Source: Develop ]

computerandvideogames.com
Tamoor Hussain
Tamoor Hussain
Staff Writer

Tamoor plays anything and everything but really likes fighting games. On evenings and weekends he might be Batman. He speaks about himself in the third-person.Read more

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Comments

8 comments so far...

  1. Report this post Reply with quote
    shellster2 on 30 Jan '12 said:

    I hope Zynga crash and burn. Clearly they're taking the pi$$. I never got all that Farmville crap either.

  2. Report this post Reply with quote
    Villanous on 30 Jan '12 said:

    With Zynga apparently being so unscrupulous and screwing over developers it's surely only a matter of time before Activision purchases them, seems like a match made in heaven ( or more likely hell).

  3. Report this post Reply with quote
    gmcb007 on 30 Jan '12 said:

    Ahh Zynga, the cancer of gaming. A company that would charge you to breathe if they got the chance. No suprise there's a case of plagiarism from them. Mind you, their market of bored housewifes and U10 year olds wouldn't notice the difference.

  4. Report this post Reply with quote
    fatherofthenoo on 30 Jan '12 said:

    The issue is that masses of mindless drones will continue to purchase Zynga's software without questioning their "source of inspiration", thus supporting their obvious plagiarism.

  5. Report this post Reply with quote
    wombatinahat on 30 Jan '12 said:

    I think you'll find they cloned Tiny Tower and released it as Dream Heights not the other way round :P

  6. Report this post Reply with quote
    Windowlicker79 on 30 Jan '12 said:

    I understand the uproar about the Farmville game, but there are really only so many ways you can represent bingo before it can no longer be considered bingo.

  7. Report this post Reply with quote
    ensabahnur on 30 Jan '12 said:

    I'd rather be playing Sun Bingo anyway.


    http://cached.imagescaler.hbpl.co.uk/resize/scaleWidth/460/?sURL=http://offlinehbpl.hbpl.co.uk/News/OMC/F9BE55FA-ADC3-55CF-8A240DCCACA8D773.jpg

  8. Report this post Reply with quote
    alan666 on 30 Jan '12 said:

    isn't Bingo just bingo though :? thus all bingo games are just the same ?