Electronic
Arts ("EA") today announced that it filed a lawsuit
on behalf of its Maxis Label against Zynga for infringing EA's copyrights to its
Facebook game, The Sims Social.
In the Complaint, which was filed in the United States District
Court for the Northern District of California today, EA claims that in Zynga's
recently-released Facebook game The Ville, Zynga willfully and intentionally
"copied and misappropriated the original and distinctive expressive
elements of The Sims Social in a violation of U.S. copyright laws."
The Sims Social, launched in August 2011, brought the
distinctive universe of EA's world-renowned franchise, The Sims, to the social
gaming audience on Facebook. An instant hit, The Sims Social rapidly
gained tens of millions of users, and maintains a current user base of several
million active players on Facebook.
Lucy Bradshaw, General Manager of EA's Maxis Label, commented on
the lawsuit in a statement posted to EA's website, www.ea.com:
"As outlined in our complaint, when The Ville was
introduced in June 2012, the infringement of The Sims Social was unmistakable
to those of us at Maxis as well as to players and the industry at large. The
similarities go well beyond any superficial resemblance. Zynga's design
choices, animations, visual arrangements and character motions and actions have
been directly lifted from The Sims Social. The copying was so comprehensive
that the two games are, to an uninitiated observer, largely indistinguishable. Scores
of media and bloggers commented on the blatant mimicry.
"This is a case of principle. Maxis isn't the first studio
to claim that Zynga copied its creative product. But we are the studio that has
the financial and corporate resources to stand up and do something about it.
Infringing a developer's copyright is not an acceptable practice in game
development. By calling Zynga out on this illegal practice, we hope to have a
secondary effect of protecting the rights of other creative studios who don't
have the resources to protect themselves.
"Today,
we hope to be taking a stand that helps the industry protect the value of
original creative works and those that work tirelessly to create them."
