There is a certain irony here given that Pincus himself has stated his company is less about innovating and more on replicating tried and true models, and refine them to a high-margin point.
Zynga sues former CityVille exec, accusing him of stealing game ideas
21–27 of 27 posts
Re: Zynga sues former CityVille exec, accusing him of stealing game ideas
#22How does it feel, Zynga? You do this to all the indie developers everyday
Re: Zynga sues former CityVille exec, accusing him of stealing game ideas
#23Dubious lawsuits are a telltale sign of a company on its way down. When all else is lost, file lawsuits. What's to lose?
If we can't pay our bills with earned revenue, maybe we can get a few judgements for some quick cash.
Whether this applies to this case, I do not know. Draw your own conclusions.
Re: Zynga sues former CityVille exec, accusing him of stealing game ideas
#24I'm not going to go into the ethics of the exec's behavior, but given the really valid possibility of Zynga going under, perhaps a valid strategy for the accused is to simply run out the clock?
Re: Zynga sues former CityVille exec, accusing him of stealing game ideas
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I know about it because I manage a network of 100+ regular users. It is my responsibility to make sure they don't bring files from old job or take files to next job.
Re: Zynga sues former CityVille exec, accusing him of stealing game ideas
#26If 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: https://www.dropbox.com/teams/security
I don't find it particularly amazing. I always understood that whatever you look at while in the office can be snooped on or logged.
It is a sensible business practice where your edge in a competitive market are keeping game mechanics and future projects under wraps.
Re: Zynga sues former CityVille exec, accusing him of stealing game ideas
#27Sigh... Remember back in the days when "stealing" used to mean taking something away from someone? These petty fights are getting tiresome.
Is there anything of value to "steal" from Zynga anyways? It's not like their games require complex architectures. Anyone knowing the basics distributed computing could easily recreate their server-side. Hopefully someday lawsuits will be over the best interests of the public, not companies who constantly manipulate the public for profits.
They didn't steal server code; it was confidential business docs.
> Zynga says Patmore took files that are critically important to the game maker's business, including revenue projections, monetization plans, more than 10 unreleased game design documents, employee compensation details, strategic road maps, and his entire email box, containing 14 months of confidential communications.
http://allthingsd.com/20121014/zynga-files-suit-against-form...
Just because a file doesn't compile, that doesn't mean it's not valuable.