Zynga accuses Playdom of stealing company secrets, gets restraining order
An ongoing legal battle between social gaming rivals Zynga and Playdom got even uglier this week.
Zynga filed another suit claiming that Playdom had hired away four Zynga employees who had helped the company steal Zynga’s secrets, including a crucial document called the Zynga Playbook. The paperwork says:
The Zynga Playbook is literally the recipe book that contains Zynga’s “secret sauce,” and its contents would be invaluable to a competitor like Playdom. The Zynga Playbook constitutes a… Continue Reading
No. 2 Electronic Arts exec John Pleasants on his defection to hot startup Playdom
A couple of weeks ago, Electronic Arts executive John Pleasants told me how excited he was to help that giant video game company adjust the age of the Internet.
Now he’s bolted from Electronic Arts and joined one of the hottest social gaming startups, Playdom.
That’s sort of like Joe Biden quitting his job as Vice President of the United States to become the mayor of Las Vegas. EA has 9,000 employees, while Playdom has 65. In… Continue Reading
Roundup: AOL spinoff, secret news meeting, and more
Here’s the latest action:
AOL spin-off approved by Time Warner — After AOL’s merger with the media conglomerate in 2000, it’s been, well, a long decade. AllThingsD has more.
Leading newspapers hold secret meeting to discuss charge for content — The Atlantic reports. No word on whether there was an entrance fee.
Social game-maker Playdom hire game veterans — Virtual Worlds News covers.
Hulu Desktop, kinda — “Hulu Desktop simply presents an alternate [user interface] for the site (now with sound effects!) that’s… Continue Reading
Hi5’s latest virtual moves: Another games deal, flirting and ad-blocking services
Hi5 is in the middle of a big transition. It’s trying to be more of a “social entertainment site” and less of a social network. Part of that means more games for its gaming section — yesterday, it announced a deal with Playdom, a company that builds gaming applications for social networks, following another recent announcement with RockYou. These games are using Hi5’s virtual currency, and could make money for the company eventually, but they… Continue Reading
Facebook platform developers could see $500M in revenue this year
A growing number of game makers on Facebook are making money from virtual goods — from poker chips to virtual clothes that users can buy or earn while playing gaming applications with their friends on Facebook. The combined ecosystem of these game developers and other companies supplying services to them could generate half a billion dollars in revenue in 2009.
That’s significant, considering third-party applications on Facebook have been viewed as gimmicks making no significant revenue…. Continue Reading
Playdom: Another social gaming company playing it smart with virtual goods
Virtual goods may be making billions of dollars for some web companies in Asia, but the business model — which can be as simple as letting users buy virtual jackets for their avatars using real money — hasn’t been a hit here until recently. For what has likely been more than a year now, third parties on social networking platforms offered by Facebook, MySpace and other sites have been experimenting with various forms of virtual… Continue Reading
Playdom expands from MySpace games to Facebook
Playdom, formerly known as YouPlus, built its own little empire as one of the leading makers of games for the MySpace social network. Now the company hopes it can repeat that success on Facebook.
It will battle against some tough, entrenched opponents on Facebook. The sink or swim experience should determine whether Playdom was actually good when it dominated MySpace, or merely lucky.
The Mountain Calif.-based company has had a string of hits on MySpace, including the… Continue Reading