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Social Gaming Is Battleground over 'Fast Following'

By Kate Moser
July 29, 2010

A year ago, Playdom Inc. co-founder Dan Yue was depressed that his social gaming company, which says it has 38 million monthly users on platforms like Facebook and MySpace, hadn't launched a new game in almost six months. Following competitor Zynga Game Networks Inc. wasn't fun either, he wrote in an e-mail exchange with his lead game designer. “I run into Zynga folks at bars every weekend and have to deal with them calling me out for cloning them,” Yue wrote. “It sucks. But it sucks even more missing quarterly earning projections.”

Zynga's lawyers are now using that message, among other evidence, to cast Playdom as a desperate competitor that stooped to unfair and illegal tactics ' including trade secret theft. Its first amended complaint, filed in April, names eight current and former Playdom employees, alleging they stole key documents from Zynga on their way out the door to new jobs at Playdom. Zynga Game v. Playdom, C09-2748.

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