You probably use Facebook, because it stretches out into most of the developed world and most people who find themselves on the internet reading stories about gaming have a certain level of internet proficiency. Maybe I’m wrong, but probably not. Anyway, if you do use Facebook, you know about Zynga and how utterly obnoxious most of their products can be. Game requests, posts on people’s walls about some new, probably awful social game that they are playing that when you look at, you realize that it is pretty much a carbon copy rip off from some other game and that no one seems to really care. This is the reputation that Zynga has built for themselves, as well as smartphone versions of their games that use a lot of in-game purchases, take up an inexplicable amount of your phone’s available memory and never seem to really close and continue to drag your phone down into the muddy depth of hell.
Well, they’ve been having some financial problems of late. They were the “it” company that outsiders and financial analysts thought would be the next big thing on Wall Street, and of course, it simply didn’t turn out that way. Their stock has gone from $15.91 a share to $2.17 a share and all of the awfulness that comes with that has reared its ugly head at them. The blowback from their issues continue as it looks like they will now be laying off 5% of their full-time workforce to help cut costs, which includes closing down their Boston studio and making significant cuts in their Austin studio. On top of this they are proposing closing down their Japanese and UK-based studios, retiring some of their older games and reducing their investment in “The Ville.”
Tough luck for those who have lost their jobs in this economy, but profitability is number one to Corporations, not the employees.
