Zynga was recently accused of copying the titles of smaller developers in its bid for total internet domination. Today, a Redditor who says he was a former full-time engineer at the company has called game copying a “standard operating procedure” at the company. As proof, the user provided part of his termination letter from the company, noting that he quit six months ago.
“[The alleged copying of Tiny Tower] is all standard operating procedure here. If you can't buy em, clone em. Even the core technology for FarmVille (MyMiniLife), was bought. The only 'homegrown' codebases at Zynga is MafiaWars 2 and maybe Poker, the rest of their tech was just bought from small studios. Lookup Dextrose Engine. To me, that's utterly creepy. They try to choke out the competition by gating all these engines and tech,” wrote the user, Mercenary-Games.
“Producers and Product Managers often scout the market. Whatever is trending hot, will get cloned, bought, or buried.”
The user also accused Zynga of spying on players in order to make their titles more enticing. In fact, the user alleges that Zynga even has a name for players that spend over $10,000 in its titles: Zynga Black.
“Internal metrics researchers often give studio wide talks on what trends are going on. They've basically tracked down very popular players and also players who've spent an excess of 10k into the game,” he wrote.
“We often tweak our features to match and maximize for a particular gaming habit. We do this for massive populations of players. Players are not aware of this. To me, that's a big brother like issue, someone is measuring and monitoring your behavior intimately, and you don't know how that data is going to be used.”
Zynga has yet to respond on the allegations made by the user. Update: When asked by IndustryGamers, Zynga declined to comment.
