Mob Wars

Mob Wars is a multiplayer role-playing game hosted on the social networking site Facebook. It allows players to engage in Mafia-style wars with one another and has become one of the most lucrative Facebook applications and the first to net USD 1M per month in revenue. However, this number has never been confirmed by the developer or any third parties.

Developed by David Maestri while he worked for Freewebs.com, it was subsequently the subject of an unsuccessful intellectual property lawsuit as Maestri's former employers attempted to claim ownership over the asset. The lawsuit was ultimately settled in December 2008 with the IP for Mob Wars remaining with Maestri but with SGN allowed to develop their own Mafia based role-playing application. In August 2008, Mob Wars had 2.5 million active users. It has spawned several very similar games with nearly identical gameplay and format on both Facebook and MySpace, some of which, such as Zynga's Mafia Wars, were the subject of further lawsuits. Zynga made some changes to Mafia Wars so it wouldn't resemble Mob Wars as closely, but Mob Wars creator David Maestri moved forward with his lawsuit. In September 2009, Maestri and Zynga settled the case for about $7–$9 million, less than the $10 million Maestri had originally demanded.

In 2009 the developers of Mob Wars created a spin-off game called Mob Wars: La Cosa Nostra, which follows a similar format, but awards skill points at a much faster pace than the original game.