Zynga settles lawsuit with PyramidVille developer

Zynga has settled its trademark infringement lawsuit against another developer that attempted to add a "Ville" suffix to its game titles, this time French studio Kobojo, maker of PyramidVille. The social game giant has made it a point to sue a number of companies (e.g. Dungeonville developer Night Owl Games) in an effort to protect the "Ville" branding that Zynga uses across many of its popular titles like CityVille and FarmVille, which make up some of the biggest games on Facebook. Zynga filed its lawsuit against Kobojo in May, 15 months after PyramidVille originally released on Facebook (it also released a title called PyramidVille Adventures for mobile). It originally sought damages equaling three times the profits Kobojo has received from the series. But as a representative for Kobojo tells Gamasutra, "Although the terms of the parties' settlement are confidential, the parties can confirm that neither party made any payment as part of the settlement." Kobojo, however, has recently changed the name of PyramidVille to PyramidValley, and PyramidVille Adventures to PyramidValley Adventures. The Facebook game's popularity has declined quite a bit over the months, dropping from its peak of nearly 3 million monthly active users to now 430,000.