Zynga sues former CityVille exec, accusing him of stealing game ideas | Hacker News Reader

Zynga sues former CityVille exec, accusing him of stealing game ideas

arstechnica.com

22 pointsDeinos26 comments

If the accusation is true then I think this case is justified. Zynga have done a lot of things I disagree with. This isn't one of those things.

You can't just copy 760 company files which I assume are not public into your private Dropbox account. It may have been a mistake. It might not. Either way some sort of legal action seems inevitable.

I'm amazed at the kind of auditing info on Dropbox activity Zynga have access to. Guess that business account really paid off.

There's only a brief mention of 'security testing and auditing' here, no details as to the extent of what they offer (e.g. how Zynga discovered his attempt to 'cover up' copying the files:

https://www.dropbox.com/teams/security

I don't find it particularly amazing. I always understood that whatever you look at while in the office can be snooped on or logged.

It is a sensible business practice where your edge in a competitive market are keeping game mechanics and future projects under wraps.

Is there anybody who's surprised by this? Zynga is always suing somebody.

Totally. It's their new monetization strategy. Didn't anyone get the memo on their last earnings call?

The real revelation here is that zynga has trade secrets.

There is a certain irony here given that Pincus himself has stated his company is less about innovating and more on replicating tried and true models, and refine them to a high-margin point.

The implication from the article is that this is part of a new way to keep employees from jumping ship. By making an example of this one, regardless of whether or not they did anything wrong, Zynga makes it less likely other employees would want to jump to another game house. Only Zynga would think of that strategy...

Only Zynga would think of that strategy...

Nope -- Like every other idea they have, they stole it. PhoneDog sued an ex employee for his Twitter followers:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/dec/27/company-sue...

Dubious lawsuits are a telltale sign of a company on its way down. When all else is lost, file lawsuits. What's to lose?

If we can't pay our bills with earned revenue, maybe we can get a few judgements for some quick cash.

Whether this applies to this case, I do not know. Draw your own conclusions.

Sigh... Remember back in the days when "stealing" used to mean taking something away from someone?

These petty fights are getting tiresome.

Intellectual property - nobody likes it until they amass it. I think even Oracle was anti-patent until they got enough.

In general, it's hard to be against something that's a keystone to how you make your living.

Yeah, it's a shame when laws and language evolve to meet the changing conditions that modern society faces.

You can't steal files from your old employer. I know almost everyone does this but that doesn't make it right.

I think you've revealed more about yourself by this. I have never copied a file I made for an employer (and there's some code from my last^2 job that would've been really useful in my current one), and I'd be amazed if more than a small proportion of people did.

I know about it because I manage a network of 100+ regular users. It is my responsibility to make sure they don't bring files from old job or take files to next job.

Spies, double-agents, mercenaries, and turn-coats have been stealing and smuggling information for years.

We can use 'counterfeiting' if you would like, but both are just as bad. I feel like people that make your argument do so because they want to make it seem like copying private IP isn't wrong.

Is there anything of value to "steal" from Zynga anyways? It's not like their games require complex architectures.

Anyone knowing the basics distributed computing could easily recreate their server-side.

Hopefully someday lawsuits will be over the best interests of the public, not companies who constantly manipulate the public for profits.

They didn't steal server code; it was confidential business docs.

> Zynga says Patmore took files that are critically important to the game maker's business, including revenue projections, monetization plans, more than 10 unreleased game design documents, employee compensation details, strategic road maps, and his entire email box, containing 14 months of confidential communications.

http://allthingsd.com/20121014/zynga-files-suit-against-form...

Just because a file doesn't compile, that doesn't mean it's not valuable.

If there's no incremental cost isn't he just "pirating" the files?

I'm not going to go into the ethics of the exec's behavior, but given the really valid possibility of Zynga going under, perhaps a valid strategy for the accused is to simply run out the clock?

How does it feel, Zynga? You do this to all the indie developers everyday

This brings up a question that isn't new at all: How do you secure your designs and data from "walking away"?

In the really old days a significant piece of work may have required a sizable external hard drive to steal. Then came writable DVD's and you could move ~5GB per disk with ease. With USB drives one could move 64GB for about $40 on a keychain.

Then there are services such as Dropbox. And, of course, anyone could setup a server for a few bucks and FTP gobs of files if allowed.

Other than reactively (lawsuit once discovered, etc.), how are companies protecting from having digital work product stolen by less-than-honest employees?

These days physical products are designed entirely digitally. All of the CAD, CAM, EDA and code are files that are easily moved. This can be a huge problem. How far does trust go? And how dangerous is the seemingly innocent "taking work home" event once and if an employee leaves the company?

Companies often turn to DRM software like Liquid Machines, Active Directory RMS, etc. Of course these won't stop a determined thief with access and motive from photographing or transcribing data, but it can be useful to protect against redistribution of complex work (such as the Excel spreadsheets upon which more than a few substantial businesses are built).

My current employer blocked all external storage devices on company machines (this has been rather annoying for engineers, as you can imagine). Dropbox was blocked about 6 months later. I don't think Google Drive has been blocked yet. This is really kind of futile since someone who is really motivated to steal IP is going to be able to get around these restrictions.

A previous employer of mine had thousands of design documents stolen by an engineer (employee) from China, who then successfully fled to China. This made national headlines and was considered a serious national security / competitiveness issue. After this incident, all personal computing devices and storage media were banned from company premises. Random bag checks were routinely conducted at entry points to company premises. However, bag checks were fairly poorly done so I'm not sure what this really accomplished. I wonder how the company is dealing with the proliferation of smartphones though, because they haven't banned them from premises yet from what I understand.

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