Zynga Files Retaliation Against EA, EA Calls It 'predictable Subterfuge'

"Today you responded to EA's claims that you think have no merit. We moreover filed a retaliation that addresses activities by EA you think to be anticompetitive and wrong business practices, inclusive authorised threats and final for no-hire agreements. We look deliver to getting back to focusing all the efforts on delighting the players."

Reached for comment, EA orator John Reseburg told Joystiq, "This is a predicted disguise directed at ludicrous concern from Zynga's steady copying of other artists and studios. Zynga would be improved served perplexing to grip onto the timorous number of employees they've got, rsther than than suing to pick up more."

EA's legal case claims that the "the transgression of The Sims Social was observable to those of us at Maxis together with to players and the industry at large." The authorised reply by Zynga denied those allegations and demanded a jury trial, doubt the tenure of disdainful rights by EA.

Zynga's answer and urge for a jury hearing reads, "The two games at situation in EA's Complaint, Zynga's The Ville and EA's The Sims Social , go to a longstanding and precocious genre well known as 'life simulation' games. No one, inclusive EA, might lay affirm to the disdainful correct to rise and let go games in that genre, or to occupy the familiar modes of countenance and organic elements that must of prerequisite be used in the genre and that have advance to typify it."

Zynga cited games in its own lineup in more aged to amicable games published by EA, namely Zynga's 2008 diversion YoVille . Zynga purported that " The Ville continues the evolutionary growth of Zynga's own lineage," starting with YoVille, that Zynga remarkable expelled 3 years previous to The Sims Social . Zynga's reply one after another to exclude that " The Sims was the initial diversion of its kind."

Zynga compared its CityVille diversion with EA's SimCity Social game, observant that "EA's 'city' diversion showcases elements traditional to the look, feel, and workings of large cities that typify Zynga's game, expelled 18 months earlier. Crowded town blocks, high buildings, and the must be sinecure staff to run the town are a couple of of the many elements shared by both games."

"Employing scènes à faire and familiar organic elements is not