Inside Social Games

It seems like only yesterday that news arose that Psycho Monkey is suing Zynga.

Now, it appears that Psycho Monkey, the company founded by Mob Wars creator and former SGN employee David Maestri, has filed suit again for copyright infringement – this time against You Plus, Inc. Known as “The Godfather” in the MySpace app gallery, You Plus is the creator of the number one MySpace game, Mobsters.

Mobsters is a mob-themed RPG/Strategy text-based game that makes use of the social capabilities of the MySpace Platform for its core game-play. Players build a mob, do missions, earn money, level up, and compete against other players for glory and supremacy (okay, maybe not so much, but you get the point).

Ironically, this is another “Mob Wars Clone” that may be more successful that the title it is “cloning.” In 2008, Mobsters was actually the most installed application on the platform, and as of last month, had 13,330,928 total users on MySpace. That same month, Mob Wars for Facebook sat at 2,850,189 monthly active users. MySpace doesn’t publish monthly active numbers for its applications.

While little has been published by the courts regarding the actual suit thus far, precedents like these in IP around social gaming are sure to be an interesting trend this year. The outcome of this and similar cases will have important effects on similar games across social networks as well as the iPhone in the months ahead.

The suit was filed on February 12, 2009 with the California Northern District Court over “Intellectual Property – Copyrights.” The court docket, “Psycho Monkey, LLC v. You Plus Inc.” can be found here.