Zynga Cityville, Farmville Dishonest entertainment broker San Francisco, California

This is to report Zynga, producers of the online game, Cityville, as applying dishonest practices to make unassuming people pay for what is otherwise a free service.

In particular, Zynga/Cityville, which is found via the Facebook.com website, manipulates their game to lead users into paying for what otherwise would be free, by adjusting settings in-game to make it difficult without paying for additional rights.

Example: In order to acquire an additional 12x12 area to expand their city, a player must build enough houses to expand the population to a certain number. Zynga/Cityville then raises that number before the player can succeed and reaching the sum specified. It is my opinion that the only rationale behind such a move is to entice/lure the player to spend real money to buy enough game cash to unlock the needed area for expansion that they would have otherwise had access to.

Environment: Cityville, administered by Zynga, is located solely on Facebook.com, a popular social meeting place for young people who are generally dependent on parents for funding and inexperienced with predatory practices.

Additionally: In my case, I did spend some money, albeit a modest sum, to acquire a newcomers package. But the sum spent is irrelavent because there was a purchase made using US funds from a US bank card. This makes their devious game tricks similar to buying something only to find that you did not get what you paid for. It is a genuine consumer rip off in that sense. In another sense, their practices are like a casino that gives players loaded dice so that they cannot win.

Further: It is my intention to file a report with the California Attorney General as well as investigate the possibility of a Class Action.

Noyes: I tried to find contact information for Facebook, but their website seems devoid of any such information.