By Joey Davidson |
The CEO of Zynga, Mark Pincus, has elected to take a big hit in salary in order to right the ship. According to Games Industry International, Pincus has dropped his salary to $1 annually and has removed himself from the pool of executives who can receive…
By Adriana Lee |
After initial success and growth, Zynga wound up having a rough ride on Gaming Boulevard. So it did what anyone would do: It turned onto a new road — Gambler’s Alley. After launching online poker and casino games in the United Kingdom on Wednesday, it already…
By Roy Choi |
In an attempt to distance itself from Facebook, Zynga annoucned that it has made it possible to play their games without having to log in to the social networking site. Tom Caitlin, general manager of Zynga, cited users’ preferences of not displaying their real names…
By Adriana Lee |
It’s official: Turning familiar tech properties into scripted entertainment is the modus operandi for the show business industry. The latest to join the ranks is Farmville, the popular social media game from Zynga. The Wall Street Journal reports that it’s becoming a half-hour animated TV…
By Joey Davidson |
The Facebook gaming industry was a bubble with the inevitable destiny of bursting. Once Facebook found a way to monetize the platform for developers, tons and tons of companies poured in from all over the world with their own unique and half-hearted ideas. One company that was…
By Roy Choi |
Zynga CFO Dave Wehner has left the mobile gaming company to join Facebook to assume the role of Senior Vice President of Corporate Finance and Business Planning. Wehner is a former investment banker that joined Zynga in 2010, replacing Mark Vranesh as CFO. Well looks…
By Todd Haselton |
Zynga’s hit titles Draw Something and Words With Friends are now available for Windows Phone. Microsoft promised the titles several months ago and both are free for owners of Nokia’s Lumia-branded Windows Phone handsets for the next two months. Unfortunately, early downloaders are already calling for…
By Adriana Lee |
It’s sad whenever a company has to ax numerous employees, and that’s no less true for Zynga, which laid off five percent of its workforce recently. And now, like a sign of the times, this for sale notice — on a 2010 Lamborghini Gallardo Superleggera…
By Joey Davidson |
Update (2:39pm EST): Gamasutra is reporting that they now have first-hand information regarding Zynga’s lay-offs. According to the site, Zynga’s Austin studio has seen a massive round of lay-offs. Chicago and Boston are also rumored to have closed. Original story: While Apple had the technology world’s attention…
By Eric Frederiksen |
Social monster Zynga has been having a pretty tough time lately. Their stock prices dropped earlier today after a company call announced weaker than expected earnings again. In August, Zynga lost their Chief Creative Officer, Chief Operations Officer and two vice presidents. The many follow-ups to…
By Brandon Russell |
Zynga, a social games maker behind Farmville, has seen yet another high-ranking departure from its ranks. Jeff Karp, chief marketing officer, has resigned from the struggling company, joining an exodus of sorts after COO and CCO left Zynga earlier this year. The company has endured…
By Joey Davidson |
When two villains clash, who do the bystanders cheer for? When Vader sees Luke being pummeled by the Emperor, he stands up and decides it’s time to drop his evil ways and hurls Palpatine into the new Death Star’s reactor shaft. Yes, I know too much about…
By Joey Davidson |
EA is officially suing Zynga for The Ville and its infringement upon The Sims Social. The company claims Zynga essentially copied the work of its Maxis studio so closely that EA had to stand up and put them on notice. The trailer at the head of this post…
By Eric Frederiksen |
You don’t know who Kixeye is yet? I’m going to be completely honest with you. Until a couple days ago, I didn’t either; at least not until this video started popping up all over the place. Their over-the-top, NSFW recruitment video is a hell of…
By Joey Davidson |
In what can only be described as a poor attempt at tongue-in-cheek humor, EA has released a new trailer for SimCity Social. SimCity Social is the company’s latest stab at the Facebook gaming platform, and we’ve actually produced an article about its intrusive ways. The trailer…
By Joey Davidson |
Zynga has officially announced the coming of a sequel to one of their most popular social games, FarmVille. With 3D graphics, more features and more social elements, Zynga is clearly betting the farm (I won’t apologize for that, not a chance) on FarmVille 2. If…
By Joey Davidson |
Zynga’s stock has taken a noticeable 5 percent tumble in the wake of the Zynga Unleashed press event held earlier today. Despite announcing brand new games, a new cross-platform service and the coming of FarmVille 2, the mega social games maker has seen a sharp decline.…
By Joey Davidson |
During today’s “Zynga Unleashed” press conference, the massive social games maker announced a new platform for their products: Zynga With Friends. Zynga has published several games on platforms like Facebook, Google+, Android and iOS. Users playing those games were relegated to socially connecting with users…
By Mark Hearn |
One of the core focuses of Microsoft’s new Windows Phone experience will be games. Shortly after announcing that Marketplace had reached the 100,000 app milestone, Microsoft revealed that the popular social game maker Zynga will be bringing both Words With Friends and Draw Something to…
By Joey Davidson |
As Zynga continues to roll through the mobile and Facebook game development worlds, it seems the company is poised to buy up any fast-moving, successful studio making a blip on the radar. Their newest target, however, is one studio that’s made much more than a…
By Adriana Lee |
Gotta love a rags-to-riches story. It’s even better when it’s a tech story that comes with a genuinely heartwarming twist. It all starts with a small operation called OMGPOP. You might know it as the developer of the smash hit game app Draw Something. But…
By Joey Davidson |
OMGPOP, the studio behind Draw Something, was acquired by Zynga for around $200 million in the last two weeks. During that purchase, one OMGPOP employee decided to walk away from the company in order to keep making and supporting his own, independent games. That dev is Shay…
By Joey Davidson |
Last week, Omgpop was acquired by Zynga for roughly $200 million. The indie developer was responsible for suite of mobile games, chief among them being the exceptionally popular Draw Something. When the deal went down and news broke of its happening, the word was that Zynga…
By Sean P. Aune |
Rumored for the past two days, Zynga and OMGPOP have now made it official with the former acquiring the latter. Although Zynga hasn’t said how much it paid for the makers of Draw Something, yesterday’s numbers had the company valued at $130 million, but speculation…
