Mafia Wars, Mobsters Meet in Court

Their games, Mafia Wars and Mobsters, run neck and neck as the top game on MySpace and other social networks, but the stakes are too high to let any misunderstanding get settled informally. Hence a lawsuit filed last week by Zynga, developers of Mafia Wars, against Mobsters-maker Playdom.

The complaint centers around the way Playdom advertises its own mob-centered title. Zynga alleges Playdom is deceiving players with ads that "misleadingly associate" its Mobsters game to Zynga’s Mafia Wars. Zynga wants Playdom to take down its "Like Mafia Wars?" ads, pay damages, and run new ads that make a clear distinction between the two games and companies.

The stakes are high for both companies as gangster-styled games which are played across social networks are vast money makers for their owners. Mafia Wars has more than 2.5 million daily users. Inside Social Gaming lists the two titles in a neck and neck race for dominance on the MySpace Games chart – the June chart shows Mobsters barely edging out Mafia Wars as the top-played game.

The mafia-based role-playing genre has a history of legal fistacups. In mid-2008, social games maker SGN sued former employee David Maestri over rights to the popular Mob Wars game which he developed while still an employee of SGN (then called Freewebs). That complaint was later settled, with the IP for Mob Wars remaining with Maestri but with SGN allowed to develop its own Mafia based role-playing title, which it did with Mafia. And earlier this year, Maestri and his company Psycho Monkey filed suit against Zynga, claiming Mafia Wars infringed on the copyright of Mob Wars.

The dispute could boil over later today in San Francisco as Zynga’s CEO Mark Pincus and Playdom's cofounder, once-CEO and current chief product officer Dan Yue appear together on a game industry panel.

Comments

[a]

what is a "fistacup"? some sort of cup full of fists?

[chi hair straightener]

Thanks for posting the article, was certainly a great read!

[TheSneezingLobster]

I think the author meant to use the word "fisticuffs".