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Leaked Zynga Memo Justifies Copycat Strategy

Posted by timothy on from the nothing-new-under-the-sun dept.

bonch writes "After taking heat over allegations of copying hit indie game Tiny Tower, Zynga founder Mark Pincus wrote an internal memo justifying the company's strategy of cloning competing titles, citing the Google search engine and Apple iPod as successful products which weren't first in their markets. Pincus infamously told employees: 'I don't want f*cking innovation. You're not smarter than your competitor. Just copy what they do and do it until you get their numbers.'"

12 of 384 comments (clear)

  1. And that is what really stiffles innovation by elrous0 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Who wants to come up with the next great innovation, when you know damn well that the second you do, some big player with more resources is just going to swoop in and steal it?

    This is the kind of thing that copyright and patent laws were SUPPOSED to protect against. But, in reality, copyrights and patents are just something the big boys use as bludgeons against the little guys (and against each other). You think a little indie developer like Nimblebit has the money to hire even a single lawyer to go up against Zynga's *team* of high-priced lawyers? Good luck with that.

    --
    SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
    1. Re:And that is what really stiffles innovation by Exitar · · Score: 5, Funny

      Remove lawyers?

    2. Re:And that is what really stiffles innovation by countertrolling · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Revoking an abusive corporation's charter and putting its intellectual 'property' into the public domain would be much more effective. That's the kind of death penalty we should rally around.

      --
      For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
    3. Re:And that is what really stiffles innovation by countertrolling · · Score: 5, Insightful

      We shouldn't allow such complex laws that we need lawyers.

      --
      For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
    4. Re:And that is what really stiffles innovation by i+kan+reed · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This is a more reasonable direction to take, but part of the reason laws are so complex is because not every situation is the same. And you could have laws with a very broad scope with a lot left to judges to decide, that would harm one of the underlying principles of common law many people agree with, the equal protection provision.

      If person A commits a given action, and person B does the exact same, you don't want the judge to have leeway to execute A and give B a month's probation. This means that laws have to be specific about different cases and their distinctions. Complexity arises naturally from that.

      Basically, I'd need to see any proposed plan of simplification before I could ever agree to it. It's a nice idea though.

    5. Re:And that is what really stiffles innovation by MozeeToby · · Score: 5, Interesting

      If person A commits a given action, and person B does the exact same, you don't want the judge to have leeway to execute A and give B a month's probation.

      We already do this. We don't punish actions, we punish consequences. If I'm in a hurry and blow through a stop sign on purpose I get a fine. If I'm distracted by the guy behind me tailgating and blow through a stop sign and kill someone I'm up for manslaughter. My illegal activity, not stopping at the sign, is identical. But the consequences, and therefore the punishment are very different; in fact, they are nearly reversed from what some schools of ethics say they should be.

    6. Re:And that is what really stiffles innovation by SirWhoopass · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If the law was only concerned with consequences then there would be no difference between manslaughter and first-degree murder. The outcome is the same: someone died. Action (or inaction, in the case of negligence) plus intent are a part of the law.

  2. There is a good business oppertunity here by BondGamer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Someone should start copying all Zynga mobile titles. They already have done the research and figured out what are the best games to copy. You copy their games, make what you think are the best improvements, and reap all the profits. Call it Dream Tower.

    1. Re:There is a good business oppertunity here by Stormthirst · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The irony here is that:
      a) You'd probably make quite a profit
      b) You'd get sued by Zynga - and they'd win.

  3. What's wrong with that? by pruss · · Score: 5, Interesting

    When the Tetris folks try to squash all the Tetris clones, people here think that's bad, and we're right that it's bad to squash Tetris clones. There is no copyright on concepts. But the same applies here. It shouldn't matter too much if it's a big company copying the ideas of a small developer did or a small developer cloning the ideas of a big company. It would, of course, be polite for the big company to offer some sort of thanks, though.

    I looked at the side-by-side screenshots, and while the basic (uncopyrightable) gameplay ideas are very parallel and presumably copied, the graphics (which are copyrightable) are significantly different in style. And looking at coin amounts in the two screenshots, it looks like the rules weren't copied either (not that there would be anything wrong with copying rules, since there is no copyright on game rules, only on their written expression).

    Early in January, I released on Amazon's Appstore a popular app aimed at the Kindle Fire to dim the too-bright screen. About two weeks later, two others appeared. I don't know if there was copying of ideas going on. But even if there was, what's the big deal? The competing apps have somewhat different interfaces, and differ a little bit in feature set, and now consumers have more choice. And inspiration in respect of additional features can go both ways, and as a result all the apps can get better.

  4. Re:oooooooh by JustSomeProgrammer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You lost me. The big boy is copying the little guy. The little guy is the creator and has a game on market that the big boy just blantantly ripped off and marketed better to a wider area and with distribution channels the little guy cannot compete with. Removing the copyright would allow the little guy to... copy the game that the big guy copied from him?

    I could be missing something, but how is the situation better? Are you proposing that every living human on earth (7 billion little guys aka the population of the earth) will band together to take down the big boy when copyright is gone? Or are you saying that 7 billion people innovating separately will create more value than 3000 people teaming together (# of employees at Zynga)? That's of course assuming that people won't copy off of each other when there is no penalty to do so. I honestly don't think that something like the Pyramids, any building bigger than a hut, most games that require a diverse amount of skills to create, would be made without people teaming together. I'm pretty sure even in this case the game wasn't originally created by just one guy but by a small team of people with different skills coming together to make a better product. Some people are better creators than innovators. And innovators aren't always the greatest creators. And I have rarely seen someone with one of those skills being a great marketer.

  5. Re:oooooooh by neonKow · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Absolutely would not help. Copyrights allow little guys to get into a business. Without copyright, this wouldn't be a leaked memo; it'd be a public memo. There would be no reason for Zynga not to copy indie games if not for copyrights, and they would have the resources to market their product far better than most indie producers will.

    Removing patents and copyrights is not the solution to people exploiting a loophole in the patent/copyright system.