Zynga hit by new cloning allegation

Days after Nimblebit accused Zynga of plagiarising its freemium game Tiny Tower, the Farmville company has come under fire from another studio.

California group Buffalo Studios claims that its game, Bingo Blitz, has been unfairly copied by the recent title Zynga Bingo.

In an open message laced with irony, Buffalo told Zynga it is “moved that your new game was so inspired by our innovative product Bingo Blitz”.

“Bingo Blitz has been growing throughout the past year and has obviously earned the attention of titanic forces in the industry,” the company said.

The notice also claims that Buffalo was inspired to go public with its complaint after reading about Nimblebit’s accusation that Zynga had pirated its game.

The message in full can be found below.

It is not clear if either Nimblebit or Buffalo is taking action beyond public complaint. Zynga, which launched a $10 billion IPO late last year, has yet to comment. The Cityville creator has therefore not accepted that its game are plagiarising other studios’.

The issue of game cloning has flared up in recent months.

Over the weekend, mobile games group Spry Fox launched a lawsuit against casual game group 6Waves, alleging that its latest release – called Yeti Town – is a "blatant copy of Triple Town."

And in an emtional blog post made late last year, Greg Wohlwend of Aeiowu accused Gamenauts of cloning his Radical Fishing game, explaining the loss he felt after the alleged plagiarism.

“There are chunks of time, maybe 20 minutes, where I can work away and try to forget about Gamenauts and Ninja Fishing. Those are nice but have been getting more infrequent,” he said.

“Today, was especially hard. Ninja Fishing reached #7 on overall apps in the app store and it upset me more than I thought anything in this business could. I broke down.

“Next thing I know I’m waking up. I got up and sat down and I saw that twitter had erupted with more rage for Gamenauts and the whole mess. It didn’t make me feel any better. It brought me back to that disease and I realized that to be able to work like I need to, in order to earn a living, I had to forgive Gamenauts.”

Bingo Blitz pulls in one million daily active users, the company added.