The Zynga and Playdom Social Gaming Rivalry

As I sit at home on a Saturday afternoon watching my team Michigan State University take a beating from Mac team Central Michigan University, I thought about the competition that Playdom and Zynga are having.  Instead of taking it to the football field, Zynga and Playdom are taking their competition to the court room.

This past year, Zynga sued Playdom over misleading advertising.  Zynga claimed that Playdom was comparing their game Mobsters to Zynga’s Mafia Wars game.

This past year, Zynga sued Playdom over misleading advertising.  Zynga claimed that Playdom was comparing their game Mobsters to Zynga’s Mafia Wars game.  Playdom changed around the advertising campaign since then, but now this past week Zynga sued Playdom and several other defendants again.  This time it is over breach of contract, stealing trade secrets, intereference with contracts, etc.  Four former Zynga employees were named as the defendants along with several other Playdom of secrets.

Supposedly Playdom hired some of Zynga’s employees and those employees took some trade secrets and other proprietary documents.  One of the documents was the Zynga Playbook which has a list of techniques, game behavior, customer behavario, etc.  Another ex-Zynga employee stuck 70 files on a USB storage device a couple of weeks before joining Playdom.  More details as the story develops.

Related posts:

1. Gaming Company For Social Networks, Zynga Raises $10 Million
2. Social Network Gaming Company Zynga Pulling In $100 Million This Year
3. Moblyng Raises $2.65M And Partners With Playdom
4. Zynga Acquires MyMiniLife
5. Zynga Raises $29 Million To Keep Making Facebook Games