Zynga Faces More Patent Litigation, Game Industry Rejoices

If you listen closely, you can hear real game designers all around the world laughing in Zynga’s face. Zynga, the Vanilla Ice of the gaming industry, was hit by yet another patent suit last Wednesday. According to a press release by Agincourt Gaming, “Agincourt, a recent entrant into the social gaming space, owns foundational patents that claim priority back to 1996 and cover processes for credits-based online gaming and a prize redemption system based on the outcome of game play.”  This suit involves suspending 12 of Zynga’s most popular social games and could seriously damage its standing in the market.

Since being founded in 2007, Zynga has amassed an estimated net worth of over $15 billion, but Agincourt harshly claims that “Zynga’s remarkable growth has not been driven by its own ingenuity or innovations. Rather, it has been widely reported that Zynga’s business model is to copy creative ideas and game designs…and use its market power to bulldoze the games’ originators.” Them be fightin’ words. In the past, Zynga has been harshly criticized for the design of several of its games, including FarmVille, which many say is a carbon copy of Slashkey’s Farm Town. Agincourt is not alone, though, and Zynga’s involvement in 24 different lawsuits this year is the clearest example of its self-warranted unpopularity. It’s hard not to see karma at work here.

Please visit my farm, I really need the money so I can pay off my Mafia Wars loans.

Zynga is no stranger to harsh game design criticism either. Many take issue with what they see as Zynga’s money-first-game-last mentality. As a scathing article by WIRED points out, instead of focusing on narrative or gameplay, Zynga designers build facades over purposely addictive, monetized systems. You can hardly disagree with WIRED’s assessment when you see that these games purely revolve around, what game designer Daniel James describes as, “clicking, watching a number go up, and being told to spam [your] friends.” So, while these lawsuits may take their toll on this social gaming giant, many in the game industry will sit back and enjoy the due process of law.