Social Game Maker Zynga Sues Playdom over Stealing Trade Secrets

It may not sound like it, but the emerging market of social gaming is as cut-throat as it gets. The competition is fierce and there's good reason for it, top player Zynga is bound to make over $100 million this year. However, it's not that uncommon for companies to “borrow” ideas, or entire games, for that matter, from each other and almost all the big fish are doing it. But that may take a turn for the worse, now that Zynga has filed a suit against competitor Playdom, accusing it of stealing company secrets and poaching employees.

Zynga makes some serious accusations against Playdom and several other parties, ex-Zynga employees. The company claims that four of its employees, now working at Playdom, were hired to steal company trade secrets, including one of its most prized possessions, a document it calls the Zynga Playbook, the company's 'magic recipe' of sorts.

“The Zynga Playbook is literally the recipe book that contains Zynga’s 'secret sauce,' and its contents would be invaluable to a competitor like Playdom,” the company claims in the suit. “The Playbook is the result of years of testing, development, trial and error, analyzing customer behavior, game behavior, optimizing past successful techniques, and collective know-how that Zynga has spent millions of dollars and more than tens of thousands of man hours developing and devising, and which could only be compiled by developing and deploying successful games over a period of years to millions of them.”

The company also accuses Playdom of assigning would-be employees, then working for Zynga, going through a recruiting program, with small tasks such as comparing games they were working on with the ones developed by Playdom and asking for detailed descriptions. Another former employee is accused of copying 70 files to a USB drive before moving to the competing company, and one of emailing 22 internal documents. The judge has issued a restraining order against Playdom and the other defendants, forbidding them to delete any documents that may be related to the case before they can be reviewed.