“Like ‘Mafia Wars?’” reads a Facebook ad for Playdom’s text-based social management title, “Mobsters.” Understandably, Zynga, the company behind the wildly successful Facebook MMO “Mafia Wars,” isn’t too keen on developers riding its coattails, and are suing Playdom, according to a report from Gamasutra. Zynga believes the ads are causing “damage to its goodwill and reputation” as well as negatively impacting traffic and profits.

Zynga’s claim seems reasonable enough, but their claim that traffic’s suffering as a result might be hard to prove since it was earlier reported that over nine million people use the application each month on Facebook alone. But I’m not a lawyer, so I’ll quit with the analyzing.

In return for Playdom misusing the MMO’s name, Zynga wants “corrective advertising” to run, and for Playdom to cough up money for damages. As of writing, an estimated amount was not given.

Keeping past cases in consideration, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Playdom countersue under the belief that Zynga is attempting to monopolize the market. We'll find out.

Posted by Kyle Stallock
June 23, 2009

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