Kixeye: Kabam copied our game

Social gaming developers Kixeye and Kabam are involved in a public dispute over similarities between their games.

Kixeye created Backyard Monsters, an RTS title, for Facebook, and has accused competitor Kabam of copying its code to create similar title Edgeworld.

"There is no question that the engineers of EdgeWorld had Backyard Monsters open in one window while they coded the copy in another," said Will Harbin, Kixeye CEO, in a statement.

"It's not detrimental to Kixeye in the short term, but this kind of practice is bad for all of us in the gaming industry - it will eventually sour users and it certainly does the opposite of proving that Facebook can be a legitimate gaming platform."

Harbin also spoke to Industry Gamers about the possibility of legal action.

"We are still discussing this matter with our attorneys, but at the end of the day, we hope that our fans and the community will condemn Kabam for copying our game.”

Kixeye also suggested that Backyard Monsters may not be the first game Kabam has copied.

"Instead of creating great original games, Kabam is wasting talent and resources on cloning games that already exist. (For more examples, look at Kabam's Kingdoms of Camelot vs Evony)."

Kabam responded saying it was "flattered" by the attention.

"Our team draws ideas and inspiration from many sources, including movies, pop culture, science fiction, literature, history and, most importantly, from our players," said Kevin Chou, Kabam CEO.

"As a strategy game, it builds and expands on our previous 4 successful strategy games, and features a host of new gameplay mechanics to further entertain and engage our core gamers."

Backyard Monsters currently has around 942,000 daily users. EdgeWorld is still in beta and has 20,000 daily users.