

'Tiny Tower' Ripoff 'Dream Heights' Hits US App Store; Zynga Employees "Love It" - bond
http://toucharcade.com/2012/02/14/tiny-tower-ripoff-dream-heights-hits-us-app-store-zynga-employees-love-it/

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jedberg
Building a great product is step one. Marketing it is step two.

Zynga is really good at borrowing step one and executing step two, but they're
not the only company that does this.

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coderdude
It's harder to nerd-rage on, say, Valve than it is to ride that Zynga-hating
bandwagon 'til the wheels fall off.

Of course, if Valve ever makes a deal with Facebook then naturally that'll be
a different situation altogether.

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zerostar07
Guys, zynga has been caught years ago creating fake accounts to post reviews
for their games. This is from 2009:
<http://forum.developers.facebook.net/viewtopic.php?id=41577> sadly facebook
has removed app pages and all their reviews

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joejohnson
This "article" is BS. The average rating for Dream Heights on iTunes (at the
time of my writing this) is above 4.5/5 stars. Hardly the overwhelming
negative response this article claims.

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palish
The game pops up a messagebox that says "If you give us 5 stars, we'll give
you more features!"

Proof: <http://db.tt/whiVaG0t>

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abk
Not a fan of zynga, but tiny tower and others do that too. It seems pretty
standard for games to prompt users for reviews.

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palish
They're offering additional game features in exchange for 5 stars, not merely
prompting users for reviews.

Do other apps do this?

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Zarathust
For a company who ripped off Sim Towers I don't really get why they are
complaining this much

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lazerwalker
Other than the basic aesthetic of "you're building a tower!", Tiny Tower and
SimTower have practically nothing in common. If anything, Tiny Tower draws
more from Zynga's "Ville"-style games than it does from SimTower.

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bdz
and the developers of simtower laughing quietly

