Moore affronted and upset by Zynga’s copycat games

EA is standing up for the industry against Zynga in its lawsuit over cloning allegations, the publishing giant’s COO has claimed.

Speaking to Eurogamer, Peter Moore said that there had been a number of examples in the past where Zynga had release copycat titles, but there had never been a company with the resources to take on the social games giant in court.

He added that he felt affronted and upset over Zynga’s recent release, The Ville, and said he’d finally seen enough of studios copying existing ideas.

"When we looked at The Ville we felt somewhat affronted by what we saw as copyright infringement,” said Moore.

“We also feel from an industry perspective that a number of these things have happened before related to Zynga, but there’s never been a company that has the wherewithal and the resources to take it to the next level. We do.

"So, we’re defending our Maxis studio, and we’re standing up for the industry. The roots of what we do as an industry is creative, from the minds of people who sit there and build story lines and characters and mesh it all together and work hard to do it. You take years to do that. And when you see somebody, quite frankly, take months replicating what you’ve done, you’re upset. We were upset. We were upset for Maxis.”

EA filed its lawsuit against Zynga earlier this month, alleging the similarities between The Sims Social and TheVille amounted to copyright infringement.

The lawsuit also suggested that that Zynga had a well-known competitive playbook of “Steal someone else’s game. Change its name.”

Zynga however has denied the allegations, and called the copyright lawsuit ironic and unfortunate, and claimed that the EA’s own SimCity Social bore a close resemblance to CityVille.