

Zynga sues former CityVille exec, accusing him of stealing game ideas - Deinos
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/10/zynga-sues-former-cityville-exec-accusing-him-of-stealing-game-ideas/

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bobsy
If the accusation is true then I think this case is justified. Zynga have done
a lot of things I disagree with. This isn't one of those things.

You can't just copy 760 company files which I assume are not public into your
private Dropbox account. It may have been a mistake. It might not. Either way
some sort of legal action seems inevitable.

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jschuur
I'm amazed at the kind of auditing info on Dropbox activity Zynga have access
to. Guess that business account really paid off.

There's only a brief mention of 'security testing and auditing' here, no
details as to the extent of what they offer (e.g. how Zynga discovered his
attempt to 'cover up' copying the files:

<https://www.dropbox.com/teams/security>

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bobsy
I don't find it particularly amazing. I always understood that whatever you
look at while in the office can be snooped on or logged.

It is a sensible business practice where your edge in a competitive market are
keeping game mechanics and future projects under wraps.

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omnibobble
Is there anybody who's surprised by this? Zynga is always suing _somebody_.

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phereford
Totally. It's their new monetization strategy. Didn't anyone get the memo on
their last earnings call?

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zerostar07
The real revelation here is that zynga has trade secrets.

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zeruch
There is a certain irony here given that Pincus himself has stated his company
is less about innovating and more on replicating tried and true models, and
refine them to a high-margin point.

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mbreese
The implication from the article is that this is part of a new way to keep
employees from jumping ship. By making an example of this one, regardless of
whether or not they did anything wrong, Zynga makes it less likely other
employees would want to jump to another game house. Only Zynga would think of
that strategy...

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motoford
_Only Zynga would think of that strategy..._

Nope -- Like every other idea they have, they stole it. PhoneDog sued an ex
employee for his Twitter followers:

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/dec/27/company-
sue...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/dec/27/company-sues-ex-
employee-twitter)

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0wza
Dubious lawsuits are a telltale sign of a company on its way down. When all
else is lost, file lawsuits. What's to lose?

If we can't pay our bills with earned revenue, maybe we can get a few
judgements for some quick cash.

Whether this applies to this case, I do not know. Draw your own conclusions.

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josteink
Sigh... Remember back in the days when "stealing" used to mean taking
something away from someone?

These petty fights are getting tiresome.

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chime
You can't steal files from your old employer. I know almost everyone does this
but that doesn't make it right.

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lmm
I think you've revealed more about yourself by this. I have never copied a
file I made for an employer (and there's some code from my last^2 job that
would've been really useful in my current one), and I'd be amazed if more than
a small proportion of people did.

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chime
I know about it because I manage a network of 100+ regular users. It is my
responsibility to make sure they don't bring files from old job or take files
to next job.

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r00fus
I'm not going to go into the ethics of the exec's behavior, but given the
really valid possibility of Zynga going under, perhaps a valid strategy for
the accused is to simply run out the clock?

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aimatt
How does it feel, Zynga? You do this to all the indie developers everyday

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robomartin
This brings up a question that isn't new at all: How do you secure your
designs and data from "walking away"?

In the really old days a significant piece of work may have required a sizable
external hard drive to steal. Then came writable DVD's and you could move ~5GB
per disk with ease. With USB drives one could move 64GB for about $40 on a
keychain.

Then there are services such as Dropbox. And, of course, anyone could setup a
server for a few bucks and FTP gobs of files if allowed.

Other than reactively (lawsuit once discovered, etc.), how are companies
protecting from having digital work product stolen by less-than-honest
employees?

These days physical products are designed entirely digitally. All of the CAD,
CAM, EDA and code are files that are easily moved. This can be a huge problem.
How far does trust go? And how dangerous is the seemingly innocent "taking
work home" event once and if an employee leaves the company?

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hkmurakami
My current employer blocked all external storage devices on company machines
(this has been rather annoying for engineers, as you can imagine). Dropbox was
blocked about 6 months later. I don't think Google Drive has been blocked yet.
This is really kind of futile since someone who is really motivated to steal
IP is going to be able to get around these restrictions.

A previous employer of mine had thousands of design documents stolen by an
engineer (employee) from China, who then successfully fled to China. This made
national headlines and was considered a serious national security /
competitiveness issue. After this incident, all personal computing devices and
storage media were banned from company premises. Random bag checks were
routinely conducted at entry points to company premises. However, bag checks
were fairly poorly done so I'm not sure what this really accomplished. I
wonder how the company is dealing with the proliferation of smartphones
though, because they haven't banned them from premises yet from what I
understand.

