EA have officially launched a law suit against Zynga, for their similarities between recently released The Ville and Maxis’ The Sims Social.
According to EA’s website:
“The core legal issue is our belief that Zynga infringed copyrights to our game, The Sims Social. In legal terms, our claim is that Zynga copied the original and distinctive expressive elements of The Sims Social in a clear violation of the U.S. copyright laws.
The legal reasons are solid. But for creative teams who feel that their hard work and imaginations have been ripped off, there’s obviously an emotional element too.”
The Sims Social supposedly has around ten million users on Facebook, and many were able to liken The Ville to The Sims Social – it’s kinda hard not to, if you’ve played them. To an uninitiated observer, the two games would almost be indistinguishable, even though they have been released literally a year apart. Obviously, this is a copyright concern for EA.
Lucy Bradshaw, the manager of Maxis, continued by saying: “This is a case of principle. Maxis isn’t the first studio to claim that Zynga copied its creative product. But we are the studio that has the financial and corporate resources to stand up and do something about it. Infringing a developer’s copyright is not an acceptable practice in game development. By calling Zynga out on this illegal practice, we hope to have a secondary effect of protecting the rights of other creative studios who don’t have the resources to protect themselves.” It’ll be interesting to see if blatant mimicry can actually pass off as a copyright infringement – we’ll keep you updated.
Check out Charalanahzard’s blog here (Opens new window)
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