You could call Zynga’s story a meteoric rise to prominence, especially with their net revenue in 2011 being about 1.14 billion dollars. And in the same breathe that I say that, you could also say that Zynga meteor is now plummeting. For those unaware, Zynga rose in the ranks mostly because of FarmVille, and most of that was driven through Facebook. Seldom is the person who hasn’t seen the Facebook spam… my God the spam. At some points, Zynga was responsible for as much as 10% of Facebook’s revenue. In 2011 Zynga filed to be a publicly traded company, original offering was at $10 a share. Today, you can trade shares of Zynga stock for $2.39. Now, as a way to save money via cost-cutting, Zynga is dropping support for eleven of their games. For those of you still invested in any of these, I’m sorry to say that your time investment in virtual goods and virtual currency is now meaningless. As you may expect, there are a few “villes” on this list:
- FishVille
- ForestVille – Pulled from app stores
- Indiana Jones Adventure World – Shuts down January 14th
- Mafia Wars 2
- Mafia Wars Shakedown – Pulled from app stores
- Mojitomo – Pulled from app stores
- Montopia
- PetVille
- Treasure Isle
- Vampire Wars
- Word Scramble Challenge – Pulled from app stores
This also comes in the wake of mass layoffs and office closures. While I don’t think Zynga will be going away tomorrow, the issues that they have been facing seem to be indicative of problems with their general business model in the longer term. If nothing else, I truly hope the employee’s who bet on Zynga remaining a top apps contender find gainful employment soon. This isn’t mean to sound inflammatory, but does anyone in our community still play these titles anymore? Or ever?