Social games giant Zynga announced massive layoffs today of 520 employees worldwide, and are shutting their offices in Los Angeles, New York, Austin and Dallas. The cuts come in the wake of an announcement by CEO Mark Pincus to employees, speaking of a transition from browser-based social games to development of mobile games.
In his letter, Pincus stated: “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.” The cuts in the company are expected to lead to company savings of $70-80 million.
Zynga’s social games have been under-performing lately, with the notable exception of FarmVille 2, and the company’s wave of new mobile games has been slow coming to market. Notably, the company kept its guidance for the full year where it was, indicating some confidence in the new releases expected in the second half of the year.
Source: GI.biz
