Ex-employees allege copying culture at "evil" Zynga

Californian newspaper SF Weekly has published what it claims are interviews with former Zynga staff, who allege that the FarmVille studio's bosses knowingly duplicated rival games and discouraged innovation.

Similar assertions have been made in the past, plus the paper's sources remain anonymous. One is reported as claiming that Zynga founder and CEO Mark Pincus exclaimed "I don't f---ing want innovation.

"You're not smarter than your competitor. Just copy what they do and do it until you get their numbers."

The apparent employee himself told SF Weekly that "I would venture to say it is one of the most evil places I've run into, from a culture perspective and in its business approach. I've tried my best to make sure that friends don't let friends work at Zynga."

Eyebrows have been raised at Zynga titles' similarity to other games in the past, particularly FarmVille to Slashkey's earlier Farm Town, though no court action was ever brought about.

However, Digital Chocolate is currently suing the studio over use of the Mafia Wars trademark, while Zynga has previously settled a lawsuit from the creator of Mob Wars out of court.

However, former Zynga leader engineer and investor Tom Bollich downplayed suggestions of open cloning. "A little bit," he admitted. "I'm sure at some point we looked at Mob Wars and took some of his ideas. As for just out-and-out copying, that tended to not actually happen."

The paper's attempts to source a response from Zynga itself proved unsuccessful, with PR agency Brew Media Relations alleging that the studio only tended to allow interviews when it knew "there's not going to be anything negative in it."