The battle of the douchebags has heated up. America's worst company and gaming's most hated corporation are doing battle in a gargantuan showdown for the ages. While EA may have sued Zynga, the Facebook gaming champ has levied a countersuit against the Imperialist Software Nation of EA, mainly for anti-competitive behavior over a former suit to prevent former employees from working at Zynga.
According to Bloomberg News Zynga is trying to derail the attention of the current suit stacked against them that alleges direct plagiarism of an EA product, namely Zynga's The Ville being a ripoff of The Sims Social.
To deflect some of the heat, Zynga has claimed that EA has unlawful business practices, as stated by the general counsel for Zynga, Reggie Davis...
“Today we responded to EA’s claims, which we believe have no merit,”...“We also filed a counterclaim which addresses actions by EA we believe to be anticompetitive and unlawful business practices, including legal threats and demands for no-hire agreements.”
According to Zynga, EA was pissed after several executives exited the company to join Zynga's staff back in 2011. Allegedly, EA CEO John Riccitiello had lawyers attempt to prohibit Zynga from hiring in former EA executives to prevent them from getting leverage in the social and mobile games space...a space that the two are currently fighting over with unfettered vehemence.
According to EA spokesman John Reseburg, this is just a ploy of derailment to get people to stop paying attention to the current plagiarism charges leveraged at Zynga, the current top dog of social gaming on Facebook, where Reseburg states...
“This is a subterfuge aimed at diverting attention from Zynga’s persistent plagiarism of other artists and studios,” ... “Zynga would be better served trying to hold onto the shrinking number of employees they’ve got, rather than suing to acquire more.”
If your head is spinning from all the nonsense, it's okay...you're not alone.
Many gamers are just hoping that Mark Pinkus, Zynga's CEO, and John Riccitiello, EA's CEO, build up enough anti-gaming Ki to charge up spirit bombs big enough to destroy both companies in a massive corporate implosion, and hopefully Wallstreet will fart out the residual leftovers.
EA, the third largest Facebook games publisher has a lot to gain from Zynga going down, and Zynga has a lot to gain from getting out of this case without bleeding their capital dry on legal expenses and piss poor public relations. For gamers, we just get to sit back and watch these two titans throw financial haymakers at each other using douchebag lingo and petty corporate infighting in an attempt to gain an edge over each other. It's best to whip out the popcorn and grab a lawn chair...drama just got real.
