Zynga Rips Off Tiny Tower, Devs Issue Sarcastic Letter

Three-person indie team NimbleBit is behind the wildly successful Tiny Tower, which will soon have a curiously near-identical competitor on the iOS marketplace. Casual game giant Zynga is set to release Dream Heights, a near identical replication of the hit tower-building sim. In response, NimbleBit released a passive aggressive infographic congratulating Zynga’s success and hoping to “inspire” the company’s future games.

The comparisons to Tiny Tower are hard to ignore. The gameplay of Dream Heights follows the same system of adding new floors via a coin monetary system, upgrading elevators with cutesy names, and residents with varied personalities that affect their ideal employment. The screenshots comparisons are pretty damning, but NimbleBit never quite calls Zynga out. Instead, all three members that make up the entire company wish them luck.

Ian Marsh of NimbleBit pointed out on Twitter that Zynga did attempt to acquire their team at some point before. Apparently, providing creators with credit for their own work was too steep of a pricetag for Zynga.

[via Joystiq]