Tag Archives: MarkPincus

Zynga to shutter New York and LA studios, cut 18% of workforce

Posted on by
Zynga to shutter New York and LA studios, cut 18% of workforce

Social game monolith Zynga plans to shutter its New York City, Dalles and Los Angeles game development studios. Sources at Zynga confirmed the closures to Engadget, and also confirmed reports of layoffs affecting 520 employees (around 18 percent of the company's total workforce), and now CEO Mark Pincus published his internal letter to employees on the company's website. Apparently the ousted employees will receive, "generous severance packages" for their time; we've published the full letter below the break.

It's unknown how this will impact games and services from those offices, but it is said to cut $80 million from staff costs. The move is part of a larger restructuring at Zynga with a focus on mobile, which Pincus says will make, "mobile gaming truly social by offering people new, fun ways to meet, play and connect." The studio suffered similar closures late last year, which included Boston, UK, and Japan locations.

Update: We've also added Zynga's official press release below.

Filed under: , ,

Comments

Source: Zynga

Zynga CEO Mark Pincus says ‘no thanks’ to console gaming, isn’t worried about a life detached from Facebook

Posted on by

Zynga CEO Mark Pincus

Zynga CEO and founder Mark Pincus just took the stage here at D10, and in a wide-ranging interview with Kara Swisher, he sidestepped conversation about Words With Friends and Farmville long enough to touch on the murky world of console gaming. In a bid to quell any potential surprises at E3 next month, Mark said outrightly that his company is not interested in getting into the console world. "We're aiming for you," he said while pointing at Swisher. "We're going after the mainstream market. There's too much friction [in the console world]."

He also made clear that he tries to not look too far ahead of where the world really is. When talking about the undeniable shift to mobile, he made clear that there's still a huge amount of desktop traffic on Zynga's games -- "lots of people play while bored on conference calls at work," he quipped. It's an interesting viewpoint in a world where PSN and Xbox Live Arcade has given independent developers all new distribution platforms to reach users, but it also highlights the outfit's intrinsic attachment to Facebook in particular.

Continue reading Zynga CEO Mark Pincus says 'no thanks' to console gaming, isn't worried about a life detached from Facebook

Zynga CEO Mark Pincus says 'no thanks' to console gaming, isn't worried about a life detached from Facebook originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 30 May 2012 13:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments