Brazilian social gaming giant Vostu is laying off an undisclosed number of employees, we’ve learned. Vostu, which has raised $46 million from Intel Capital, Accel Partners, General Catalyst, and Tiger Technology Global Management; is one largest social gaming companies in Latin America. The gaming company was founded in 2007 by three Harvard classmates: CEO Daniel Kafie, chief scientist Mario… → Read More
Zynga and Vostu has settled their copyright lawsuits, according to a representative for Vostu. Vostu has paid Zynga an undisclosed sum as part of the settlement and made changes to its games.
Here is the joint statement the companies issued: “Zynga and Vostu have settled the copyright lawsuits and counterclaims against each other in the United States and Brazil. As part of the settlement… → Read More
Ah, litigation. Nothing ever really gets done, but the lawyers get paid, and there’s always drama. The Vostu v. Zynga case exemplifies all of this. And it just got weird to boot. Today a U.S. judge just told a Brazilian court that they can’t shut down a Brazilian startup. That’s definitely a new one for me.
Background: On June 16 Zynga sued Brazilian clone Vostu in California for stealing… → Read More
Two big pieces of news today in the Zynga/Vostu lawsuit (details on lawsuit here and here). In addition to that first lawsuit filed in California, Zynga also quietly sued Vostu on its home turf in Brazil (lawsuit embedded below, but it’s in Portugese).
Zynga dragged Google into that lawsuit, apparently because Orkut, popular in Brazil, is hosting the Vostu games that Zynga says are ripoffs. … → Read More
Zynga hit Brazilian gaming startup Vostu with a massive lawsuit last month, alleging that the company was copying Zynga’s games so closely that they even inadvertently included the bugs. Today, Vostu responded with a 368 paragraph document of their own (embedded below). It’s a longer version of Vostu’s press statement immediately after the lawsuit was filed, which boils down to “I Know You Are But… → Read More
The TechCrunch office pool predicted Vostu would respond to the Zynga lawsuit alleging that Vostu’s entire business is basically to copy every single thing Zynga does in one of two ways. They’d either use the “I know you are but what am I defense,” or just a more straightforward “It wasn’t me” approach.
It turns out they just did both.
Vostu’s statement: → Read More
“Let’s be clear – it is one thing to be inspired by Zynga games, but it is entirely different to copy all of our key product features, product strategy, branding, mission statement and employee benefits lock, stock and barrel. We welcome Vostu into the arena of social games, but blatant infringement of our creative works is not an acceptable business strategy—it is a violation of the law.”… → Read More
Social gaming is an international phenomenon. While Zynga is the leading social gaming company in the U.S., in Brazil it is a company called Vostu. The company has been growing rapidly and just closed a $30 million series C financing led by Tiger Management, with Accel Partners joining the round. Accel partner Jim Breyer, who sits on Facebook’s board, will take a board seat on Vostu. Previous… → Read More
Today, Intel Capital announced new investments in eight startups totaling $60 million. Below is each company, along with the size of the round they just raised. (Not all would disclose when I asked during the conference call). And while Intel led most of the investments it was not the sole investor, so the total adds up to more than $60 million. Accertify (fraud management for online… → Read More
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