One of their lesser known games, Party Place, went through a 15-month production cycle and a commercial run of the same time before being shut down due to a lack of funds. With the aggressive hiring of tiers of middle-management, Zynga began to experience less and less progress on their game development.
#PETVILLE GAME FREE#
Rather than financing market research or development projects, Zynga’s perpetual spending was directed at throwing incredibly expensive parties and lavish events filled with bouncy castles, food trucks, and free alcohol. Unfortunately, after the IPO which raised a healthy billion dollars, the spending never stopped. This seemed to be one of Zynga’s few good moves and the pivot gave investors like Google confidence in the online gaming giant’s ability to deliver on its promise to increase its share of the online gaming market. With its recent $90.5 million profit under its belt, Zynga shrewdly acquired 11 online gaming companies in 2010 including Challenge Game – responsible for the hit multiplayer franchise Games with Friends. Misguided spendingĪs Zynga approached its IPO, its battle with Facebook left the company in a weak position and in dire need of a solid base of consistent revenue. Only more recently has Zynga decided to invest more time and money into diving into mobile, with successful games such as CSR Racing. This enabled King to generate massive profits in the mobile gaming market by developing smartphone apps – bypassing Facebook and its 30% flat tax completely.įailure to realize the speed of technological developments in smartphone technology coupled with the shift in users moving from desktop to mobile, “Ville” titles came far too late to the mobile gaming market.
#PETVILLE GAME ANDROID#
Mostly well known for its popular Candy Crush title, King Digital Entertainment supplemented its Facebook profits by developing iOS and Android versions of its popular Facebook games in late 2012. What followed was a steady stream of app developers branching out into different channels to maximize exposure and profitability. With its primary source of attracting new customers via news feeds all but gone and losing 30% of its revenue to Facebook, Zynga’s reluctance to adapt quickly resulted in an uphill battle towards its IPO.
With Facebook’s sights set on driving revenue through monetized ads, the social media platform forced all of its third-party app developers to use Facebook Credits – or virtual money – and charged a 30% fee for all transactions through it. In addition, Zynga was also selling its virtual goods on Facebook for years without taxation. However, Zynga’s practice of inundating Facebook users with an endless stream of gaming requests quickly led to Facebook revising its user settings to address this issue and users were given the option to filter out these messages from news feeds completely. But what went wrong, and how can future mobile game developers learn from Zynga’s mistakes? Facebook changesįacebook was not created to be a gaming platform and like many other online game developers, Zynga’s top games were integrated as Facebook apps in order to tap into the huge user base of the social media platform. With an initial surge putting its stock value over $11.50, it quickly dropped below $10 and now currently sits at $3.56 – with over 60 discontinued games. This led Zynga to a fast-track IPO in late 2011, initially being offered at $10 a share for an estimated valuation of $7 billion. This didn’t stop Zynga from pushing on, continuing to produce a wide number of various games, all integrated into the Facebook platform. In response to this immediate success, Zynga continued to produce more “Ville” games including CityVille, Petville, and Fishville – each with a healthy number of monthly users.īut behind the facade of its commercial success was the worrying fact that 2010 was the only year the company turned a profit – although a healthy profit of $90.5 million – and since 2008 the accumulated net losses were closer to $600 million. Farmville achieved revenues of $235 million the year it was released. Within four days of its launch, Farmville had attracted over one million daily active users, and nearly $30 million in six months.įor a time, Facebook users flocked to the farming simulation game which promised SimCity-style gameplay involving the simplicities of farm life. Welcome to Holy's neighborhood where you'll meet a group of colourful creatures & unwelcomed drama.Nearly ten years ago, online gaming developer Zynga launched Farmville, an Adobe Flash gaming app on Facebook.
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