Zynga suing two former employees for stealing confidential data and taking it to Scopely

Zynga is suing two of its former employees for alledgedly stealing confidential information on upcoming games and taking it to rival firm Scopely.

Massimo Maietti and Ehud Barlach are named in the complaint alongside Scopely. Maietti was formerly a Creative Director at Zynga, while Barlach was a General Manager.

Both are accused of stealing vast quantities of data and poaching staff from Zynga to join Scopely. The complaint lists "misappropriation of trade secrets" by Maietti and Scopely, "breach of written contract" for both men and "tortious interference with contract" by Scopely.

A bit of everything

Zynga claims that on July 4th 2016, Maietti copied nine folders of internal documents to a USB drive from a Zynga-owned Google Drives account.

These files are said to include entire design documents, Zynga "learnings", and a project file for an unannounced Zynga title codenamed Project Mars.

Zynga also claims the pair assisted Scopely in bringing members of their teams with them when they jumped ship.

One employee, Derek Heck, is listed in the complaint as deleting 24,000 documents in his last month of employment, and reading articles entitled "How to delete my hard drive and start over".

Zynga is seeking to have their data returned to them by the employees, as well as damages from Scopely.

[Source: Ars Technica]