10 Video Games Popular Franchises Stole From

Zynga is a game developing company that was set up in 2007. After only two years, the company's popularity exploded after they launched the heavily addictive FarmVille. Although Zynga released many successful games like Dream Heights, Mafia Wars, Zynga Bingo, and Cafe World, FarmVille was their strongest property, garnering ten million users six weeks after release.

However, every game mentioned above has something in common; they are knockoffs. Mafia Wars is conceptually identical to Mob Wars. Cafe World is a carbon copy of Playfish's Restaurant City. Zynga Bingo has the same set up and design as Buffalo Studio's Bingo Blitz.

Dream Heights is clearly based on NimbleBit's Tiny Tower. Although Zynga deny this, they tried to buy the company months before they created Dream Heights. When NimbleBit's co-founder, David Marsh, saw Dream Heights, he said, "We were taken aback by how thoroughly Zynga had copied the mechanics of our game, right down to small trivial details that had no effect on the functionality of the game."

Months after Farm Town was released, Zynga duplicated the aesthetics of the game to "create" FarmVille. Because Zynga invested so much money into marketing, FarmVille became a phenomenon, and Farm Town sank without a trace.