Zynga Inc.

Logo: Zynga Inc.

Description

Zynga Inc. is a social network game development studio based in San Francisco, California (USA). The main company also often uses the name Zynga, Inc., a company registered in the state of Delaware (USA). It was founded in July 2007 by Mark Pincus (CEO), Scott Sale, Kyle Stewart and John Doerr. Zynga specializes in games that are integrated into social networks such as Facebook. Their games are generally free to play, but are supported through credit card payments that enhance the game and provide virtual items, and businesses of partners such as surveys or buying certain products that is rewarded with in-game currency. Many of their games use game mechanisms the drain "energy"; the player often has to wait after a number of actions to continue playing at regular intervals and games also rely on rewarding users by promoting the game through their friends on the social networks. The company is best known for the game FarmVille. In 2010 the company had 235 million active users per month playing its games. 83 million of those played FarmVille. In 2009 it had a total revenue of $200,000,000.

Many of their games are based on existing titles that served as inspiration. Examples include FarmVille (preceded by Farm Town), Café World (similar to Restaurant City), and Mafia Wars (reminiscent of Mob Wars).

Zynga has attracted a lot of developers and management of high-profile development studios. The company also owns many development studios, browser application developers and smaller social networks or virtual worlds, through new establishments and acquisitions:

  • CLZ Concepts (2008)
  • MyMiniLife Inc (2009)
  • Serious Business Inc (2010)
  • Zynga Austin (2010, formerly Challenge Games)
  • Zynga Boston (2010, formerly Conduit Labs, closed in 2012)
  • Zynga China (2010, formerly XPD Media)
  • Zynga Dallas (2010, formerly Bonfire Studios)
  • Zynga Germany (2010, formerly Dextrose AG)
  • Zynga India (2010)
  • Zynga Japan (formerly Unoh Inc)
  • Zynga Los Angeles
  • Zynga Seattle
  • Zynga With Friends (2010, formerly Newtoy, Inc.)
  • DNA Games, Inc. (2011)
  • Flock, Inc. (2011)
  • MarketZero (2011)
  • Zynga Mobile UK (2011, formerly Wonderland Software Ltd.)
  • Zynga New York (2011, formerly Area/Code Entertainment, LLC)
  • OMGPOP (2012)
  • Zynga Eugène (2012, formerly Buzz Monkey Software, LLC)
  • A Bit Lucky (2012)
  • NaturalMotion (2014)

Certain studios also disbanded when Zynga hired all employees, but did not acquire the studio itself:

  • Floodgate Entertainment, LLC (2011 - work at Zynga Boston)
  • MarketZero, Inc (2011, Austin Team, but said to remain a separate company)

Studios that appear to have been taken over without an official announcement:

  • Astro Ape Studios (2011)

The following companies have a stake in Zynga:

  • Digital Sky Technologies Ltd (2009, minority stake)
  • Silver Lake Management LLC (2010, minority stake)
  • SoftBank Corp (2010, minority stake)