Zynga, the company that rose to the epitome of success in the social gaming arena arm in arm with Facebook’s rise, has been in troubled waters for quite some time. Already with its stock touching the bottom and forced to lay off employees, Zynga has also shut down 11 of its social video games by now.
The problem with Zynga is that it wasn’t able to adapt fast enough to the changing landscape of social gaming. It did well in the initial days when Zynga was able to capture a sizable percentage of Facebook’s users and had them hooked to a number of wildly popular social games.
But those days are over and the gaming arena, at large, has moved on to the age of mobile gaming which has other demands. Zynga couldn’t improvise on time and so, its stock plummeted from $10 at its IPO to near $3 these days.
Meanwhile, the game developer has tried hard to bring together the scant resources it is left with and do away with the rest. It had already laid off a significant number of its employees and shuttered down some of its facilities.
Apparently, the next step in rendering itself profitable is to shut down such games which are a liability now. Unfortunately, for the avid lovers of social games such as Mafia Wars 2, PetVille, FishVille, Vampire Wars and Treasure Isle, they are all included in the list. Moreover, Indiana Jones Adventure World will also shut down completely by January 14.
A number of users who had spent considerable amount of real money into buying virtual goods in these games have bemoaned the step. However, Zynga has offered to compensate them with virtual goods in other popular social games.
Courtesy: Slash gear
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