A few days ago, Zynga, once the mighty ruler of the once prosperous social gaming landscape, announced that they would be making drastic cuts to internal teams, along with the shutting down of its NY, LA, and Dallas based studios.
All Things D notes that in all, 520 employees will be let go, approximately 18 percent of their workforce. They currently have 2,900 employed. The amount that will be saved has been estimated at being between 70 to 80 millions dollars.
Shortly after the news broke, Polygon published a memo that all Zynga employees received from CEO and founder Mark Pincus:
To our Zynga Community,
Today is a hard day for Zynga and an emotional one for every employee of our company. We are saying painful goodbyes to about 18% of our Zynga brothers and sisters. The impact of these layoffs will be felt across every group in the company.
None of us ever expected to face a day like today, especially when so much of our culture has been about growth. But I think we all know this is necessary to move forward. The scale that served us so well in building and delivering the leading social gaming service on the Web is now making it hard to successfully lead across mobile and multiplatform, which is where social games are going to be played.
These moves, while hard to face today, represent a proactive commitment to our mission of connecting the world through games. Mobile and touch screens are revolutionizing gaming. Our opportunity is to make mobile gaming truly social by offering people new, fun ways to meet, play and connect. By reducing our cost structure today we will offer our teams the runway they need to take risks and develop these breakthrough new social experiences.
Because we're making these moves proactively and from a position of financial strength, we can take care of laid off employees. We're offering generous severance packages that reflect our appreciation for all of their work and we hope this will provide a foundation as they pursue their next professional steps.
Although these are hard decisions, I'm confident that our strategy of building leading franchises and supporting them with the largest network is the right one for the long term. I'm encouraged by our recent progress. Running With Friends is a great example of the quality player experience we can deliver, already receiving an average 4.5 app star rating from 22,000 players in less than one month after launching. Our FarmVille franchise teams continue to innovate and deliver ground breaking new social experiences like County Fair which, despite only being available on the web, is engaging 39 million monthly players.
I want to thank every one of you for the spirit, creativity and energy that you've invested in Zynga. You've reintroduced a generation of people to gaming and through these games offered them new ways to connect with their families, make new friends and even sometimes find love.
Everyone will be affected by these changes and I'm sure there will be many follow up questions to this email. If you have specific questions relating to your project or team, please talk to your manager. For any other feedback or thoughts feel free to email me directly.
Mark
As noted, they focus will be on mobile, since Facebook gaming is not what it used to be. Though, it's worth noting that it has also just been reported that the plug has been pulled on OMGPOP, the studio responsible for Draw Something, the once red hot drawing app.
The studio was acquired less than a year ago, for the hefty sum of 200 million dollars. The following tweet, from Ali Nicolas, OMGPOP's now former VP, says everything one needs to know about the situation:
I learned via Facebook I was laid off today and @omgpop office is closed. Thanks @zynga for again reminding me how not to operate a business
— Ali Nicolas (@ali_nicolas) June 3, 2013
