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Social game publisher Zynga has settled its lawsuit against former Cityville general manager Alan Patmore over alleged theft of company secrets. The terms of the settlement were not disclosed.

Zynga filed the suit in October of last year, accusing Patmore of copying more than 760 files containing "confidential game designs from teams around the company" to his Dropbox account before departing for his current position as the vice president of product at rival online game producer Kixeye.

"I accept responsibility for making a serious mistake by copying and taking Zynga confidential information when I resigned from Zynga," Patmore said in a statement today. "I understand the consequences of my actions and I sincerely apologize to Zynga and my former colleagues."

TechCrunch reports that the two companies issued a joint statement yesterday: "Zynga Inc. and KIXEYE Inc. have reached a mutually agreeable settlement of their litigation involving Alan Patmore in San Francisco Superior Court."

#gamescom We've reached the halfway point in CityVille 2's "12 Days of Presents" Christmas event, with Day 6 just unlocked a few moments ago (as of this writing). As you might expect, these quests grow pretty complicated as we go along, but we can thankfully work on all of them at the same time over the next 26 days. Here's our complete guide to finishing Days 5 and 6 in this event: More »

#gamescom A new limited edition quest series has launched in CityVille 2, bringing a reality television show (and its host) to your city. There are six quests in this series in all, and they must be completed in the next two weeks before they expire. We're here with a look at how to get started in this quest series, thanks in part to LevelUpCity. More »

#facebook While I busy myself playing games like The Grinns Tale and the newly-released CityVille 2, the rest of Facebook mills about the old familiar haunts, munching on candy and clicking up exotic cuisine. More »

A former Zynga general manager has allegedly stolen trade secrets, the social games company claims in a new lawsuit. Zynga believes Alan Patmore, who previously worked on Cityville, uploaded a number of company assets to a Dropbox account from his company computer, both on the day before and day of his departure from the company. Said assets included, among other things, information on Zynga's game mechanics, internal assessments of Cityville's performance, monetization plans, company emails and design documents (including the final design document for an as yet unreleased game).

Zynga feels Patmore, who now works for social game company Kixeye, will use the information to directly compete with his former employer. Specifically, Zynga states that the stolen data "could be used to improve a competitor's internal understanding and know-how of core game mechanics and monetization techniques, its execution, and ultimately its market standing to compete more effectively with Zynga."

Furthermore, the company claims that, upon leaving the company, Patmore refused to sign a "termination certification," which "merely reaffirmed" his contractual obligations, among them not to take any of the company's "sensitive data."

With the walls closing in, Zynga announced CityVille 2 is in closed beta. The company couldn't share any info but to say it "delivers a truly social and visually rich city building experience." It will launch soon. Not that investors seem to currently care.

As the LA Times notes, Zynga's combined cash, securities and real estate assets are currently worth about $2.46 a share, according to analysts. But, its stock is currently trading below that price (as of this writing: $2.43), which means the company's games business is essentially worth "nothing."

These dark tidings come as brothers Paul and David Bettner, known for Words with Friends, leave Zynga. This is on top of so many high-profile departures we'd be bombarding you every other day with a post, but let's just close this off by saying some milestone moments were the departures of chief creative officer Mike Verdu, chief operating officer John Schappert and Draw Something studio OMGPOP's Wilson Kriegel.

Forbes points out Zynga is one of the worst performing stocks of the years, down 74 percent, making it one the worst-performing stocks among U.S. companies with market caps over a billion dollars. And, to think, when Zynga went public in December last year everything looked like it was going to be sunshine and lollipops... oh, wait, no it didn't.

Google Plus' casual gaming cabinet may not be as fully stocked as the Facebook alternative, but one crucial missing piece of the puzzle has just been filled in: Megalithic social monolith Zynga has ported CityVille, their most popular Facebook game, to Google's fledgling platform.

The release comes shortly after the end of Google Plus' closed beta, and now that its e-doors are open to the public, we doubt this will be the end of Zynga's extra-Facebook expansion. Seeing as the company just posted a 95 percent drop in profit year over year, developing its products beyond its existing user base is a shrewd move.

A new survey shows that large numbers of hardcore gamers are playing Facebook games like Cityville. And that these freebie games are challenging the biggest franchises in terms of total hours played online...

#cityville Super-popular Facebook game CityVille now has a little brother, developers Zynga releasing a version of the game in China. An official version. More »

Don't worry about Farmville infiltrating your Xbox 360 (and the subsequent requests from your mom and your friends that would soon follow thereafter). According to Zynga chief game designer, Brian Reynolds, the Xbox 360 landscape is small potatoes -- Zynga's after broader audiences and the user base on one measly console is simply not big enough to warrant interest.

"[Xbox Live's] too small a demographic," Reynolds told IndustryGamers. "Think about, of my friends, how many of them own an Xbox 360? Well, I'm a game developer and I even come from a triple-A space so we might even be in the double digits... Twenty or maybe even thirty percent of my friends might have an Xbox 360, but effectively 100% of them have Facebook and effectively 100% of them have a mobile phone. Of them, probably 90% have a smartphone."

Reynolds would then go on to say that the mobile space is the next area Zynga expects to put its efforts into. He says it's all about the number of people who could possibly partake in the social experience -- on the Xbox 360, he estimates "the amount of social capital that there is isn't going to be very high" on the platform. The less people on a platform, the less revenue Zynga projects to make and, thus, the less likely it is the company will be on that platform.

"That's why right now we're on Facebook for sure, and mobile is the obvious next place for us to go because it is an inherently social platform," Reynolds concluded.

#wellplayed Before there were virtual farmers in FarmVille and virtual shop owners in CityVille, there was Ultima Online. More »

Our estimates show Facebook games are making more money than the majority of traditional games.

We had an inkling this CityVille thing our mom keeps sending us requests in would be a big deal, but we underestimated just how big. After launching and quickly overtaking FarmVille's active monthly user count, Zynga's latest casual hit has now approached "sensation" levels of interest: it's enjoying over 100 million active users right now.

Casual Gaming reports there are now a total of 100,064,578 monthly active users. FarmVille's active monthly user count hovers around 57 million. Now, in case you don't quite get how big a deal this is, know that CityVille only launched on December 2, 2010 -- FarmVille's been on Facebook since June of 2009. So, in under seven weeks, Zynga's managed to usurp the most popular game on Facebook and almost double its user count.

Actually, now that we think about it, can you usurp yourself? Eh, we're sure Zynga's far too busy counting cash money to ponder such matters.

CityVille, the latest Facebook sensation from the makers of FarmVille, just hit 100,000,000 users. That. Is. Frightening. More »

#industry A new generation of games on social networks, phones and tablet computers will spur sales in 2011, Reuter apotheosizes in a story today. More »

#facebook It took over 200 years for the population of Australia to reach 22 million. It's taken CityVille, the latest game from Farmville creators Zynga, just eleven days. More »

Zynga's newest effort heads to the city.