Zynga Accused of Ripping Off Idea for Dream Heights Game

Zynga's latest iOS game, Dream Heights, bears a striking resemblance to last year's iPhone , Tiny Tower, and the makers of the original are not happy about it.

Zynga was called out for its apparent copycatting by the three-person team at NimbleBit, which makes Tiny Tower. Ian Marsh, an iPhone game developer with NimbleBit, posted an open letter to Zynga on Twitter (see below), including side-by-side screen shots of the two games, highlighting their similarities.

"Dear Zynga (all 2,789 of you)," the letter reads. "We noticed you are about to launch a new iPhone game called Dream Heights! Congratulations! We wanted to thank you guys for being such big fans of our iPhone game of the year Tiny Tower. Good luck with your game, we are looking forward to inspiring you with our future games! Sincerely, (all three of us) NimbleBit."

Both games challenge players to construct a tower floor-by-floor, with a lobby, living spaces, stores and restaurants. During both games, players take virtual inhabitants up and down an elevator as they work and live inside the building.

Zynga's interpretation, however, includes slicker graphics than the original and the ability to build-out famous landmarks such as the Statue of Liberty and the Golden Gate Bridge. Dream Heights is currently available to users in Canada while undergoing beta-testing.

A spokesperson for Zynga did not immediately respond when contacted by PCMag.

This is not the first time Zynga has been accused of stealing the idea for one of its games. The company's wildly popular game FarmVille was called out in 2009 as being almost an exact copy of Farm Town, a game developed by Slashkey.

But turning the tables on NimbleBit, a user with the handle nevesis pointed out in a Reddit discussion thread that Tiny Tower actually looks a lot like another game called SimTower, which was released by Maxis for Windows and Mac computers in 1994.