Is there anybody who's surprised by this? Zynga is always suing somebody .
Totally. It's their new monetization strategy. Didn't anyone get the memo on their last earnings call?
Zynga sues former CityVille exec, accusing him of stealing game ideas
11–20 of 27 posts
Re: Zynga sues former CityVille exec, accusing him of stealing game ideas
#12Sigh... Remember back in the days when "stealing" used to mean taking something away from someone? These petty fights are getting tiresome.
If there's no incremental cost isn't he just "pirating" the files?
Re: Zynga sues former CityVille exec, accusing him of stealing game ideas
#13The implication from the article is that this is part of a new way to keep employees from jumping ship. By making an example of this one, regardless of whether or not they did anything wrong, Zynga makes it less likely other employees would want to jump to another game house. Only Zynga would think of that strategy...
Re: Zynga sues former CityVille exec, accusing him of stealing game ideas
#14If the accusation is true then I think this case is justified. Zynga have done a lot of things I disagree with. This isn't one of those things. You can't just copy 760 company files which I assume are not public into your private Dropbox account. It may have been a mistake. It might not. Either way some sort of legal action seems inevitable.
I'm amazed at the kind of auditing info on Dropbox activity Zynga have access to. Guess that business account really paid off.
There's only a brief mention of 'security testing and auditing' here, no details as to the extent of what they offer (e.g. how Zynga discovered his attempt to 'cover up' copying the files:
Re: Zynga sues former CityVille exec, accusing him of stealing game ideas
#15Sigh... Remember back in the days when "stealing" used to mean taking something away from someone? These petty fights are getting tiresome.
You can't steal files from your old employer. I know almost everyone does this but that doesn't make it right.
I think you've revealed more about yourself by this. I have never copied a file I made for an employer (and there's some code from my last^2 job that would've been really useful in my current one), and I'd be amazed if more than a small proportion of people did.
Re: Zynga sues former CityVille exec, accusing him of stealing game ideas
#16The real revelation here is that zynga has trade secrets.
Re: Zynga sues former CityVille exec, accusing him of stealing game ideas
#17This brings up a question that isn't new at all: How do you secure your designs and data from "walking away"?
In the really old days a significant piece of work may have required a sizable external hard drive to steal. Then came writable DVD's and you could move ~5GB per disk with ease. With USB drives one could move 64GB for about $40 on a keychain.
Then there are services such as Dropbox. And, of course, anyone could setup a server for a few bucks and FTP gobs of files if allowed.
Other than reactively (lawsuit once discovered, etc.), how are companies protecting from having digital work product stolen by less-than-honest employees?
These days physical products are designed entirely digitally. All of the CAD, CAM, EDA and code are files that are easily moved. This can be a huge problem. How far does trust go? And how dangerous is the seemingly innocent "taking work home" event once and if an employee leaves the company?
Re: Zynga sues former CityVille exec, accusing him of stealing game ideas
#18The implication from the article is that this is part of a new way to keep employees from jumping ship. By making an example of this one, regardless of whether or not they did anything wrong, Zynga makes it less likely other employees would want to jump to another game house. Only Zynga would think of that strategy...
Only Zynga would think of that strategy...
Nope -- Like every other idea they have, they stole it. PhoneDog sued an ex employee for his Twitter followers:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/dec/27/company-sue...
Re: Zynga sues former CityVille exec, accusing him of stealing game ideas
#19This brings up a question that isn't new at all: How do you secure your designs and data from "walking away"? In the really old days a significant piece of work may have required a sizable external hard drive to steal. Then came writable DVD's and you could move ~5GB per disk with ease. With USB drives one could move 64GB for about $40 on a keychain. Then there are services such as Dropbox. And, of course, anyone cou…
Companies often turn to DRM software like Liquid Machines, Active Directory RMS, etc. Of course these won't stop a determined thief with access and motive from photographing or transcribing data, but it can be useful to protect against redistribution of complex work (such as the Excel spreadsheets upon which more than a few substantial businesses are built).
Re: Zynga sues former CityVille exec, accusing him of stealing game ideas
#20This brings up a question that isn't new at all: How do you secure your designs and data from "walking away"? In the really old days a significant piece of work may have required a sizable external hard drive to steal. Then came writable DVD's and you could move ~5GB per disk with ease. With USB drives one could move 64GB for about $40 on a keychain. Then there are services such as Dropbox. And, of course, anyone cou…
My current employer blocked all external storage devices on company machines (this has been rather annoying for engineers, as you can imagine). Dropbox was blocked about 6 months later. I don't think Google Drive has been blocked yet. This is really kind of futile since someone who is really motivated to steal IP is going to be able to get around these restrictions.
A previous employer of mine had thousands of design documents stolen by an engineer (employee) from China, who then successfully fled to China. This made national headlines and was considered a serious national security / competitiveness issue. After this incident, all personal computing devices and storage media were banned from company premises. Random bag checks were routinely conducted at entry points to company premises. However, bag checks were fairly poorly done so I'm not sure what this really accomplished. I wonder how the company is dealing with the proliferation of smartphones though, because they haven't banned them from premises yet from what I understand.