@PixelAddict

On the other hand, EA runs with "More City, less Ville" regarding their CityVille-clone/carbon copy-game SimCity Social, so the two are on very similar (shaky) ground :)

If this means Origin is out of the Wii U-ecosystem, then thank god for that, might even consider buying a Wii U now.

@PrpleTrtleBuBum

Actually, back in the day, Atari tried to patent the conept of an "Apparatus for Scrolling a Video Display", more commonly known as a side-scrolling game :)

Having looked a little bit more closely at both SimCity Social and Cityville, there's no doubt Zynga could take EA to court over stealing basic gameplay mechanics.

Just as an example, In both games there's a unit called "energy", at first I thought this would have something to do with laying down power grids and such, this being a SimCity game and all.

But oh no, "energy" in both these games is simply an abstract unit that you use up and eventually run out of whatever you do, leading to you then needing to bring out your credit card/paypal account and buy more "energy". As an alternative, you can invite your friends to move into your farm...eh city, or send them requests for more "energy" etc...i.e exactly like every single "Ville"-game or other social facebook game out there, most of them, like it or not EA, invented by Zynga. So go Zynga, take EA to court and counter-sue their a***es over SimCity Social, I want to see you both go down in flames :)

"More City, less Ville" as EA said when advertising their clone of CityVille called Sim City Social. May very well come back to bite them in the you-know-what. Hopefully Zynga will counter-sue and both companies end up going down in flames.

There are at least two precedents that comes to mind: "The Great Giana Sisters" which was a carbon-copy of well, guess which Nintendo game starring two brothers. They (Nintendo) had to put a stop to it and it was withdrawn from shelves. Nintendo probably also didn't like the offending game being advertised as "The Brothers are History!" :)

There was also that adventure game whose name I've forgotten that used actual textures and stuff from a Bethesda game, think it was Morrowind. Bethesda had to put a stop to it, so there are precedents.

@pal_080 Nintendo did take the makers of "The Great Giana Sisters" to court and had their game stopped from distribution, cause it was without question too similar.

Waiting for GotY edition :)

Unexpected this is...not.

"Industry will die without innovation" one can read in the sidebar, looks like this is one potential answer on how to perhaps save the industry.