Comment by chatmasta | Hacker News Reader

Comment by chatmasta | Hacker News Reader

I've always found the story of Zynga to be entertaining and fun to watch. Mark Pincus is a refreshingly down-to-earth leader. He takes a lot of shit, and his company is the butt of a lot of jokes (probably doesn't help having a huge office right next to caltrain as a constant reminder). Despite this, Pincus always has a smile on his face and an air of confidence to him. I respect this.

Pincus is a hustler. He built Zynga from the ground up, leveraged it into massive investment, but unfortunately was a little too early to the mobile gaming party. Zynga got screwed because it depended on facebook platform, and new apps emerged that did not. Supercell showed how to profit from mobile gaming and avoid platform lock-in. iOS and Android also dominated Facebook platform so any game depending on Facebook lost to competitors who built around iOS/Android.

The early moves of Pincus were very impressive, and if he can replicate that execution, I bet he can also bring Zynga through a strong recovery. I respect his confidence and leadership. Seems like a cool dude.

> The early moves of Pincus were very impressive

His early moves were deplorable. He cloned-- pixel by pixel-- emerging games built by small developers, then seeded them with traffic from other Zynga games.

Everyone did. Developers he stole from stole it from someone else, the whole social game space was a clone war. But Zynga was consistently succesful in it.

Do you remember the tower-breaking game on Kongregate and iOS that Angry Birds cloned? Or Backyard Monsters that was the original Clash of Clans?

Crush the Castle! I used to play that game during classes on my netbook back when WebOS was still a thing. Is it even possible to be nostalgic about something that happened 5 years ago?

Crush the castle wasn't even the original version of the game. It's actually inspired by another flash game called Castle Clout which almost nobody has heard of. (The developer of Crush the Castle listed the attribution in the first game's description on Armorgame's)

So because everyone did, that makes it okay?

I think the point is -> why is Zynga singled out?

Morality is not the point of the argument. Commenter above said that “original moves were impressive”, and I completely agree with him — HOW Zynga cloned games was really effective, unlike all other competitors on the market.

>Everyone did. Developers he stole from stole it from someone else

Except perhaps the dev with the initial idea? Stealing someone else's idea might be widespread, but it doesn't make it right.

I suppose this goes against the common idea here on HN that the idea doesn't matter and you should share it with everyone, even during the early stages of a startup.

Zynga shows me exactly why I don't share my ideas early on: A company with more money and more resources can bring the idea to market much faster than a 1 or 2 person shop.

I think the people that keep spreading this idea have the resources and money to 1) create their own ideas quickly and 2) take someone else's idea.

They were not ideas. They were working versions.

At some point you have to put your ideas/implementation/whatever out into the open (you might even have to advertise its existence). At that point, anyone better resourced than you can probably just mimic your work.

What alternative does anyone really have?

That's the point: every game idea was a clone of a clone of a clone, and on each copying something changed, but not significantly enough to call it a new one. However, the emd results differed from the originals drastically.

That sounds like some kind of intellectual property right that needs to happen.

If he really cloned games pixel-for-pixel, wouldn't the original authors of those games have a good copyright claim? It'd be hard to fight their lawyers if your case is iffy, but if the violation is as flagrant as you say, I'm sure the aggrieved could find a firm that would want to relieve Zynga of some of that VC money. Even if Zynga made some changes, it's likely the original authors would still be able to make the case that Zynga's product was a derivative work. The fact that this hasn't happened makes me skeptical of such claims.

If the copy wasn't close enough to be considered a copyright violation, then what's the problem? Everyone takes inspiration from others. We're all standing on the shoulders of giants. There's nothing wrong with deciding you want to compete with someone and making a similar product. Not every idea for a new company or product has to be (or even can be) completely original.

Zynga has strong lawyers. They would force small devs to take them to court, if they could afford the legal fees, then settle if they had a strong case. By then Zynga's game went viral and the smaller devs lost their first mover advantage. The SF chronicle wrote a great piece about these tactics a few years ago. The article showed how they cloned FarmVille, then settled with the victim for 11 million (FarmVille would make a billion in rev that year). im on mobile and can't search for the article rn

It shouldn't be difficult to find someone willing to help you fend off their lawyers if you have a compelling case. Again, if the violation is really this flagrant, the party alleging infringement would be calling the shots and Zynga would give them any reasonable figure to prevent the case from going to trial. Obviously it's not reasonable to hand over a year's worth of revenue.

Isn't the usual refrain "the idea is useless, it's the execution that matters"? Or does that only apply when it's a startup and not a big evil company?

That doesn't really apply when the execution is cloned as well. This phrase typically implies that there is a way to make a mark on a product beyond the initial idea. Marketing and leveraging existing user base is not a laudable contribution.

I didn't say his execution was a laudable contribution. I said it was impressive. Although if it's true he cloned other companies, why did Zynga beat them in revenue and investment? Clearly something was different with Zynga.

They were lucky to get big takeup on one of the properties that they then leveraged into the clones. "Behind every great fortune is a crime," and Pyngus' crimes in user-exploitation and idea-theft are well-documented.

If your execution can be so easily cloned, where's the value?

Funny, when Zynga first grew it was remarked as being dominant because of the tight Facebook partnership. When Zynga and FB broke up it's now pointed that it's because Zynga got to the dance too early.

The greater context is that all these coin-op arcade companies fizzle, leading all the way from Atari down. What happened to Rovio? To King? Likely the same ending for Riot to Supercell.

You get 2 to 3 years, maybe 5 tops, then you get replaced. The real game is figuring out how to grab as much cash off the table without looking as cynical and jaded and greedy as you really are.

Dependency on iOS and Android as a platform is analogous to being dependent on Facebook as a platform.

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