Oh, Zynga, will thy never learn. The company which has been blatant in its ripping off other developers’ game mechanics has now been found to steal stock photos from iStockphoto. Specifically, the Zynga Poker game features a vector artwork of a football stadium, with the watermark still there. Our reader Anand did some digging and found the artwork on iStockphoto, from artist Todd Harrison.
This could be a simple glitch where Zynga forgot to remove the watermark before the stuff went live, but even then, publishing a photo without paying the creator is considered theft. Given Zynga’s reputation these days, we wouldn’t be surprised if they just didn’t care.
Thanks for the tip, Anand!
I just have one question: Did you contact zynga asking if they have paid the creator for it? I mean, they could have had, unlikely but still.
When you pay for a stock photo, you get access to a non-watermarked version. There’s no “Oh, we forgot to remove the watermark” excuse, because your working copy of the paid-for image doesn’t have one.
They’ve also stolen from dragonsandbeasties on deviantART: http://dragonsandbeasties.deviantart.com/art/Stolen-Rainbow-Pony-306356825