It looks like the controversy around Mob Wars , a very popular social network game that has been rumored to pull in as much as $1 million a month, is only getting started. Creator David Maestri and his company Psycho Monkey have filed suit against Zynga, a popular developer of social network games. The lawsuit centers on Zynga’s game Mafia Wars – a text-based game very similar to Mob Wars, which has also developed a large following.
Zynga’s Mafia Wars launched after Maestri’s Mob Wars with very similar game play and design (not to mention a similar name). Since then some of the design elements have changed, but it’s clear that Zynga was at the very least inspired by Mob Wars (Maestri will likely contend it was a blatant clone). I suspect that Zynga will argue that text-based games similar to Mob Wars have been around for years, and games focused on mobsters are hardly a novelty. Should Maestri win the case, it would set important precedents for the future of social gaming, and would likely affect the many Mob Wars knockoffs on social networks like MySpace and Facebook and potentially the iPhone.
It’s clear that Maestri is willing to go to great lengths to defend Mob Wars, especially after he spent many months in a legal battle with his former employer SGN over the rights to the game (which he developed while he was still employed there). SGN and Maestri settled their issues last December, in an agreement that gave Maestri the rights to Mob Wars but gave SGN full license to produce similar games in the future (SGN just released its first mobster related game last week).
You can see the court docket for the case, called Psycho Monkey, LLC v. Zynga Game Network, Inc., here, but the complaint itself is not yet available online.
are u serious?
Hardly any difference. Zynga made “dragon wars” that wouldnt have violated copyright, and idea of MMOG is not patented.
Copyright sues are much easy compared to patent and intellectual property issues.
yes mafia wars is shit and is a blatant crap copy of mob wars…
Mob Wars Rules Man!!!
who cares?!
us
what about Mobsters on MySpace? they’re actually more popular than Mafia Wars.
Mafia wars is a joke. Stick to real games.
tru dat, if u dont go on every day u lose money which is pointless when i have to work through the day ?!?
cant we all just get along
I don’t understand these suits – this is just like the Scrabulous affair. US law doesn’t allow you to copyright game mechanics or actual rules. Sure, you can copyright the text of the rules, but not the content therein. Yet another frivolous lawsuit.
Oh NOOOOOO!!!! I luv mafia wars.
stupid monkey. Mafia style social games have been around for a couple decades already.
pffft, really lame lawsuit. Reminds me of the scrabble one. Million bucks a month huh? Let’s see the statements. I don’t believe that.
BTW, if you didn’t follow what happened on Friday on Wall Street in the IT stocks.
Kevin Bailey of Goldman Sachs circa last January when he had some credibility cried wolf on JAVA. Everybody shorted JAVA on the way back up to $5.70
google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&chvs=maximized&chdeh=0&chdet=1232485200000&chddm=4692&q=NASDAQ:JAVA&ntsp=0
Kevin Bailey cries wolf AGAIN last Friday morning, Nobody CARES!!
I bet there were like 100 people on pause to buy on the way down that morning, but they were all foiled.
http://www.goog...JAVA&ntsp=0
The night before at Twiistup 5, a Sun rep told me that Sun is getting ready to release multi-terabyte solid state SANs that run ZFS and support Linux and Open Solaris.
Who does Goldman Sachs think they’re fooling? That really pissed me off.
I’m not saying Kevin or Goldman had any financial interest in their recommendations on Sun, but their reasoning was and is extremely flawed. RHT does not have all the Sun contracts, and Sun has new small business initiatives like what they displayed at Twiistup for startup companies much like the Microsoft Startup Zone initiative.
I think it sucks that a small group of people can dictate to non-techies that don’t know the technology and don’t really have any idea of what’s going on. No matter how much diligence you due(pun intended), you can’t account for that type of recommendation.
Sun’s going to have a presentation about it at the next MySQL conference
http://en.oreil...ule/detail/5991
I like Mafia…
Terrible post title.
Terrible Company (zynga not the other guy)
Luv Mob Wars
Zynga has created a generic template for this type of game — ie. Dragon Wars. I’m not sure there is much of a case here.
I wrote a game like this about over 10 years ago maybe I should start sueing these people.
This is a stupid case end of story.
How many figting games are there that are? how many rpgs are there?
This is a genre of a game and there is noway this can win. I hope they lose and lose a bundle of money.
Fair enough if its a complete rip off and they are using the same design and rules etc if not it has no case.
@chris
I like Sun products and schwartzenheimer, but java totally sucks bloated software ass. Java makes Microsoft look good. Plus, Oracle owns the most valuable piece of mysql.
Yeah, who could have thought that something like Java could push something like web 3.0 and the mobile revolution ???
http://en.wikip...virtual_machine
Check out JavaFX, that’s pretty hot right now.
No TC love for JavaFX. And BTW, JAVA can drop to 0 and I won’t sell. Take that you wall street analyst guys. Reason over Frenzy, reason over frenzy.
one word: STUPID
I’m sick of stupid lawsuits, the judiciary system really needs to come up with some laws to stop this madness, you can’t do anything without worrying about getting heavily sued.
ya but maestris got a point if zynga’s game is really like mob wars – which it is…looks very similar. but now da questin is if game mechs. like timers and stuff are copyright-able. ow wow and others have gonne headstart
I’ve played these games, never found them so good. I’ve read a similar story on http://www.iamweb2.com which tells you why these games won’t make much impact on social network sites.
Rather a waste of time as far as I can tell…generic game templates are available for this sort of game (and I can almost bet they don’t make anywhere near a million a month).
That Mafia app was not only a pain in the @$$ from ppl trying to get me to add it to my MySpace profile, but I’m glad it’s gone now..lol
From the U.S. Copyright Office:
“The idea for a game is not protected by copyright. The same is true of the name or title given to the game and of the method or methods for playing it.
“Copyright protects only the particular manner of an author’s expression in literary, artistic, or musical form. Copyright protection does not extend to any idea, system, method, device, or trademark material involved in the development, merchandising, or playing of a game. Once a game has been made public, nothing in the copyright law prevents others from developing another game based on similar principles.”
http://www.copy.../fls/fl108.html
I think this one’s pretty clear-cut.
Yes, it is. I’ve seen the two and Zynga did a complete rip off of Mob Wars. They stole the format, the background, the layout of buttons, game dynamics (such as time regeneration, etc.), and even details down to “energy” to do “jobs.”
They didn’t even bother renaming things, they just stole it all and slapped a new name on it. Even the bookmark tag is the same letter “M,” just without the 2 bullet holes in it. It’s shameless and could have been done legitimately, but zynga chose the easy way instead.
Isn’t there like 4 or 5 different Mob games on the AppStore? iMob Online, Mafia Wars, iMafia, Mafia R/R (going by the App names from the home screen). They are all just copies of eachother with different interfaces (although I like iMob Online more simply because it is more stable than the others).
This would be like the originator of Tower Defense taking on the Fieldrunners guys.
I guess if it’s really that profitable, you gotta protect it with everything you can.
Mob Wars could have copied GTA.
But they didnt did they ?!?
Here goes Marc Pinkus biting the dust again.
Mobsters on myspace is the best hands down so mafia wars can kiss my arse
I am not surprized that this happened, ZYNGA RIPS OFF their customers, never gives you what you pay for and try reaching them? Forget, I will never buy chips FOR TEXAS HOLDEM, DON’T BUY BECAUSE YOU ARE MEANT TO LOSE SO YOU BUY MORE, AND TO ADD HEAT TO THE FIRE, THEY RIP YOU OFF WITH THE CHIPS THEY ARE SUPPOSE TO GIVE YOU EVERY DAY. I HOPE THEY GO FRIED IN COURT, AND THIS GUY WINS, I AM SO TIRED OF THE BIG COMPANIES RIPPING OFF THE LITTLE PEOPLE.
follow the link….
http://apps.fac...t_id=1662977430
He should sue their asses off. I just took a look at Mob Wars and personally, Mafia Wars is pretty much the same game with different graphics. When Zynga launched Farmville, a lot of people were asking how they hadn’t ripped off Farmtown.