Zynga Pulls a Gameloft, Shamelessly Clones Tiny Tower

If you follow us at all, you know that I’m a huge, huge fan of NimbleBit’s 2011 Official iPhone Game of the Year, Tiny Tower. In fact, it was my personal pick for 2011 GOTY after Portal 2. If you follow iOS news, you know that Gameloft is notorious for taking various game franchises and making iOS versions of them (for example, Uncharted or God of War clones). At least with those, though, they are games not available on the iOS store.

Looks like Zynga has decided to take things a step further by shamelessly cloning Tiny Tower with their upcoming title, Dream Heights. While you could argue that Tiny Tower isn’t a completely new idea, Dream Heights copies just about everything from NimbleBit’s breakthrough hit, other than the graphics style.

In fact, NimbleBit sent a visual “letter” to Zynga via Twitter, with side-by-side screenshots comparing the two.  Click here for the full image to see for yourself.

Right now the game is available in the Canadian App Store, if you’re Canadian and want to have a look for yourself; it’s probably only a matter of time before it has a worldwide release. Considering the way Apple has behaved with other clones, it’s unlikely Dream Heights will be pulled. It’s still a shame, and my personal hope is that this won’t negatively affect NimbleBit. The only hope is that the game get spammed with enough one-star reviews crediting Tiny Tower that NimbleBit may actually gain more users as a result.

[Source: Touch Arcade]

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