The ongoing litigation between Mob Wars creator David Maestri and SGN is over. On December 16 the two sides reached a settlement. The Mob Wars game goes to Maestri, but SGN will have rights to create similar style games itself. SGN also received an undisclosed financial settlement.
The history of this powerful little app is dramatic. It was first created by Maestri while still employed at SGN’s former iteration, FreeWebs, under the pseudonym Jason Gilbert. That alone is evidence that the game actually belonged to his employer. Maestri left SGN in February 2008, and SGN sued Maestri for control over the game. For more background, see here.
Mob Wars, which is a game that lets players act as criminals and rise through the mob ranks by committing crimes, fighting other players, etc., brings in a lot of money. Players use real currency to buy weapons and other virtual goods on the site. Some estimates suggest revenue may have peaked at $1 million/month, and there are nearly 2.5 million active users of the application on Facebook today.
It has also spawned a number of copycats, including Zynga’s Mafia Wars, with 2.7 million active users.
Given that the settlement allows SGN to create its own knockoffs without fear of future litigation, suggestion is that Maestri will pursue Zynga and others for intellectual property infringement.
$1m/month in revenues… incredible for a game I used to play on the TI-83. Seems like everything old is new again, except when add in a little social spice it becomes insanely popular.
I played the game on Facebook for some time and never once clicked an ad, or really noticed them for that matter. Where is this revenue coming from?
Crap, I was thinking of “Dope Wars”
@sam, the revenue comes from sales of virtual goods and services. Users fork over real money to buy weapons, heal themselves, level up and anything else that improves their performance or status in the game. Basically, it’s the same formula for most social games…and it’s working.
Is this related to the old early 90’s shareware game of the same name?
I would imagine the creator of the original game dopewars might have something to say.
dope wars –> http://poprl.com/ATI
Sopranos is the best. i played the game.
as a wannabe entrepreneur I have a full time job, and develop in my free time, and these agreements are bs. Why does a company deserve anything, for things I develop on my free time. These agreements should be illegal
There are many places that make you sign an employment contract that includes an Intellectual Property (IP) clause. If you want to own what you develop on your free time, then you can have your lawyer take it up with their HR department, don’t take the job, or start a campaign to lobby your elected officials to make it illegal, but don’t whine about how wrong it is *after* you sign the contract!
When you join a company, you walk in with a few talents and perspectives from your own background. However, there are projects that you will become involved in while working for the company thru which you will develop newer perspectives, insights and talents. Think of it as on the job training that the company is paying for.
While it is true that people develop ideas and projects, most of the times those ideas and projects may not have been possible if not for the work environment, employee interaction, and company resources. For that reason, when joining a company, it is a good idea to have notes of any preexisting ideas that you have, and communicate them to the HR if you want to keep them as your property, and agree not to use company resources for your pet projects.
In addition, to be fair, when you develop something, ask yourself, who contributed to this idea or project, and whose resources went into developing it further, and try to give credit where it is due, and to compensate all parties fairly. Doing so helps people grow together, and the collectivity you will hopefully develop a stronger group increased possibilities of developing newer ones. Why be limited to one good idea when collectively develop thousands of projects.
- Mohinder K. Sharma
Now, someone should re-make the various WWIV BBS games back in the day. I really miss Trade Wars. I’m actually quite surprised someone hasn’t re-made it for SNS.
Timesink (n). See also: tradewars
You know you are in trouble when you track your holdings in Excel, but you are in real trouble when you write an interface to automatically trade for you…
Dude, somebody has remade TradeWars, as an awesome browser based game…
Check it out at: http://www.tradewarsrising.com
Totally new & awesome web remake! Your wish has come true, lol
If you are going to plug your own website by saying ’somebody’ maybe you should remove the profile url to the same site..
dumbass
Mike:
I know you’re an attorney (and I’m not), but I think you might have oversimplified the scope of intellectual property rights in the games industry (as you did with Go Cross Campus et al).
There is very little you can do to protect a game concept or game design. There is lots you can do to protect a specific implementation (visuals, characters, etc) – but just as with the GXC story, the risk to other “crime-themed” economic simulation games (aka Zynga’s) is quite minor.
-Gabe
I have been watching this with interest.
There is really no reason in that game to spend real money to reach the top. I wrote a strategy guide for this thing, so I do know it quite well.
While the application is amusing at first, you can reach the point where you basically won the game. At 300+ million per hour in-game income (Cash Flow: $335,063,880 every 54 minutes. Next paid in: 32 minutes), I couldn’t care less about what things cost etc or whatever is introduced into the game. There was an attempt to introduce a new city, but it fizzled out.
I can tell you that I spent $0 to get to this point.
Thank you for sharing this.
To me this is a little different then the big company just trying to crush the “little guy”. Everyone in related articles was saying “he created it on his OWN time”. Well, he was also working for SGN which makes SOCIAL games and made a social game. So, he could have used their processes/internal skills/possibly some shared networking libraries and applied to his idea (giving him the benefit of the doubt) on his own time.
To me this would be a lot different, if he came up with a medical application or a real estate application. That’s completely different and then I would agree SGN has no rights to his creation. This sounds like SGN probably had a right to litigation.
Here is a real facebook Mobwars hack:
Take a list of all your facebook friend’s profile URL and use the form on the following webpage and it will automagically invite them all to mobwars. http://hulkstore.com/mobwars
Anybody try iMob for iPhone/iPod? I got frustrated with being dropped and getting lost connection and gave up. Then I found an alternative similar game that can be played via iPhone using Safari or on a PC/Mac. Have you tried Mafia Boss http://www.TheM.../?refer=godmama ? It is completely addictive! Come take out a hit or pimp some ho’s or be the Godfather…
If you are going to plug your own website by saying ’somebody’ maybe you should remove the profile url to the same site..
dumbass
more games are rising up of this type this game recently re released is the mafia game ganglandmafia
not as many players but yet but just as much fun if not more
cant say i like the setup on mob wars but thats just my opinion
I would imagine the creator of the original game dopewars might have something to say.
To me this would be a lot different, if he came up with a medical application or a real estate application. That’s completely different and then I would agree SGN has no rights to his creation. This sounds like SGN probably had a right to litigation.