Zynga, Social Games | featured news

Zynga posted first quarter 2013 earnings that beat analysts expectations, but shares are trading down after-hours on future outlook.

A year ago, OMGPOP CEO Dan Porter sold the games-maker to Zynga for $180 million-plus, and became the head of the company's New York outpost. Now he’s out. Porter’s departure isn’t a huge surprise, given both his timing (presumably long enough to hit certain employment and/or earn-out goals) and the fact that Zynga ended up writing off at least half of its OMGPOP deal a few months after it closed.

Zynga reports a sharp drop in its losses in the last three months of 2012, as revenues at the designer of games including Farmville stabilised.

Facebook Inc. and Zynga Inc. are changing the rules of their relationship. In a bid to become less reliant on Facebook, Zynga disclosed in a filing on Thursday that it has amended the terms of its relationship with the world's largest social network so that it can now host its Web games outside of Facebook's platform, among other things. The new agreement also leaves the door open for Facebook to produce its own games and become a direct competitor to Zynga.

Possibly trying to hide the grim news by announcing it during Apple’s event, we’ve just independently confirmed that Zynga has shut down its Boston office and laid off 2/3s of the employees in its Austin office, including cuts to The Ville and Bingo teams. We’ve now confirmed the initial report from Justin Maxwell. We’ve also just heard Zynga may have an all-hands meeting this afternoon.

Zynga has countered a copyright-infringement lawsuit from Electronic Arts with its own allegations that EA sought a potentially illegal agreement to avoid poaching each others' employees.

Zynga Inc's chief marketing officer has resigned, becoming the latest senior executive to depart the struggling social games company behind popular Facebook Inc games such as Farmville.

Not long ago, online games company Zynga looked on pace to unseat much bigger, well-established rivals as it rode the popularity of "FarmVille," the clicking game of virtual cows and real money.

Electronic Arts Inc. has sued online game maker Zynga saying that its new game "The Ville" infringes its own game, "The Sims Social." EA said Friday that "The Ville" is "unmistakable" in its similarity to "The Sims Social," which launched more than a year earlier. EA says the games are "largely indistinguishable" to a casual observer.

Zynga announced plans to offer a central hub to connect players of multiple games who use various devices.