Feed: GamePolitics News - AggScore: 80.6

Zynga Wins, Loses in Latest Round of SocialApps Lawsuit

The Federal District Court in Oakland, California has denied a motion to dismiss a suit against Zynga brought by game developer SocialApps LLC. The developer accused Zynga of copying its Facebook game, myFarm. SocialApps claimed that Zynga had shown interest in buying the rights and code for myFarm and began the process sharing due diligence material. The companies entered into a letter agreement in May 2009 and SocialApps began sharing information and source code.

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FortressCraft Developer Rejects Claims that His Game is a Minecraft Clone

In a lengthy back-and-forth with Eurogamer, FortressCraft creator Adam Sawkins explains why his Xbox Live game is so much more than a clone of Minecraft. With Minecraft officially launching next month on Xbox Live, Sawkins is taking a lot of heat from the press and gamers about his game. Many say that it is simply a cheap knock-off of Minecraft. Sawkins, who worked on the Burnout series before striking out on his own, takes issue with the comparisons to Minecraft.

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Schafer: Microsoft, Sony Must Heed Indie Developer Complaints

In a recent interview with IndustryGamers, Double Fine co-founder Tim Schafer said that the indie developer exodus from Xbox Live and PlayStation Network should be a wakeup call for Microsoft and Sony. Indie developers who once flocked to consoles have been steadily leaving for platforms that offer more exposure to their games and listen to them when they have issues.

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Anti-Net Neutrality Language Removed from Payroll Tax Holiday Bill

An amendment that was added to the payroll tax holiday legislation was removed today, much to the delight of net neutrality principle supporters. The amendment was adopted during the House Energy and Commerce Communications and Technology Subcommittee markup session in December. The amendment was put forth by Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), and would have stopped the FCC from forcing net neutrality requirements when issuing new licenses to wireless carriers who won incentive auctions authorized by the spectrum bill.

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Anonymous Hacks U.S. Government Websites in Protest of ACTA

The hacktivist group Anonymous continues to assault government websites in protest of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). The group has reportedly hacked several U.S. government web sites including business.ftc.gov, consumer.gov, and the National Consumer Protection Week official site (ncpw.gov). According to VentureBeat the group compromised the websites and then posted anti-ACTA statements and a PSA video.

Below is the statement they posted on the sites:

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War of Words: The Pirate Bay vs. the RIAA

It's always interesting when two opposing factions duel with words in the public square and TorrentFreak does its best to facilitate the messaging of both sides in two different stories.

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Report: Activision Lashes Out at Game Blog for Revealing Name of Next Call of Duty

Activision is not a happy camper today as the name of its next Call of Duty title is leaked by Amazon's French portal, then quickly taken offline. According to the Amazon France page, the name of the next game is "Call of Duty Black Ops 2." The news was first reported by Gameblog.

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Entertainment Industry Seeks to Give SOPA-PIPA Message a 'Makeover'

Readers of this story on Politico probably won't believe that it was simply a messaging problem that killed the controversial SOPA and PIPA bills earlier this year. We were there and we know  that it was millions of people who lobbied lawmakers in droves until they cried "uncle."

According to that report, Hollywood is "rewriting the script" on these laws, with plans to reintroduce them in a better light to the American public at a time as-of-yet undetermined.

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Hutch Games Explains Why They Left Sony to Develop iOS Games

A studio formed by five ex-Sony developers last year explained why they ditched the PS3 and the PlayStation Network to develop games for Apple's iOS platform. When asked what drove them into the arms of Sony's competitors, the answer was simple enough:

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Starbreeze Lays off 25 Employees

According to a GameIndustry.biz report, Syndicate developer Starbreeze Studios has eliminated 25 jobs. While our first guess would be that these jobs were temporary or work-for-hire jobs that were to be eliminated when the company finished developing the tactical action game sequel for Electronic Arts anyway, comments from Starbreeze's Mikael Nermark to GameIndustry.biz don't make a distinction:

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