Electronic Arts, Inc. recently sued Zynga for copyright infringement alleging that Zynga copied the design choices, animations, visual arrangements, and character actions/movement from Electronic Arts's Sims Social game. Sims Social released about ten months before Zynga's The Ville. Apparently, Zynga is not new to such lawsuits. There have been others involving Mafia Wars, CityVille, and FrontierVille. Zynga settled all of these lawsuits.
As more and more of these types of games become prevalent and more and more uses find themselves absorbed in these games or other virtual worlds, there will be bigger competition to keep a user's attention. Based on Facebook friends alone, the life cycle for users to play these games is about a year or so. Which means that it is important to grab new players and keep their interest by coming out with new games or features. For the unscrupulous, this would mean copying another's work rather than creating it independently. By the time that a company created the new feature or game, the game may be passe.
I am not familiar with either Sims Social or The Ville, but I am sure that there will be updates on this case. Stay tuned.
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