Copying Trumps Creating For FarmVille Creator Zynga

theodp writes "The good news for Zynga is that it scored the cover of SF Weekly. The bad news is that the FarmVillains cover story starts out by describing the secret to the toast-of-Silicon-Valley company's success thusly: 'Steal someone else's game. Change its name. Make millions. Repeat.' SF Weekly says interviews conducted with several former Zynga workers indicate that the practice of stealing other companies' game ideas — and then using Zynga's market clout to crowd out the games' originators — was business as usual. 'I don't ****ing want innovation,' one ex-employee recalled Pincus saying. 'You're not smarter than your competitor. Just copy what they do and do it until you get their numbers.' Another quipped that 'Zynga's motto is "Do Evil."' Valleywag piles on with an item on the existence of Zynga's underground 'Platinum Purchase Program,' reportedly geared towards making players known as 'whales' part with a minimum of $500 at a time for imaginary credits."

It's not stealing

[Anonymous Coward]

But... but... it's not stealing. It's copyright violation. You can't steal from somebody if they still have the original copy. (close captioning for the sarcasm impaired, that was sarcasm.).

Obviously evil.

[Dyinobal]

Zynga sounds like an evil name to me. Darth Zynga, Lord Zynga, Master Zynga all sound like good villain names to me.

Re:It's not stealing

[MaerD]

It all makes sense now, Scrabble stole all of it's ideas from Monopoly! That's why you build hotels on the triple word score tiles!

On a serious note, not being able to copyright "game concepts" or "rules" won't stop you from being sued. Scrabble has sued several "play alikes", and so have the owners of Tetris.

Re:good

[Culture20]

Nearly all of those proprietary apps are themselves clones.

Two wrongs don't make a right.

But three copylefts do.

Re:And this is a surprise to who?

[blair1q]

1. Make up a new game for facebook.
2. Wait for Zynga to rip it off.
3. ???
4. Profit!

Re:And this is a surprise to who?

[Anonymous Coward]

One glance at his userid tells me you just insulted a mighty ancient powerlord.

Re:Obviously evil.

[mdielmann]

Or a quirky geeky word: Ba-Zynga!

Re:Whales?

[Treeluvinhippy]

Casinos call high rollers whales.

I know that others have posted the same thing, but they all got modded up so I'm karma whoring in the same way Zynga steals game ideas.
Since copying others seems to work so well, I wanted to give it a try.