Los Angeles — In its battle to cut costs, social games publisher Zynga Inc confirmed on Monday that it has finally instituted its cost-reduction plan that the company talked about back in November in the wake of its fast falling share price. The drastic plan involved bidding goodbye to PetVille, FishFille, Mafia Wars 2, and a slew of other games from the folks at Zynga. The video game studio has reluctantly pulled the plug on 11 of its gaming titles, as detailed by blog site TechCrunch.
Some of the titles were completely shut down, while others were pulled from app stores or simply stopped accepting new players. Zynga, back in October said it would be axing down some 13 under-performing titles after warning that its revenues were shrinking as gamers fled from its once-popular titles published on the Facebook platform in large numbers and sharply revised its full-year outlook.
The list of casualties encompass some of the company’s most popular games, most of which were playable online through Facebook and a few that were available as iOS or Android apps. The game developer plans to reallocate resources to more successful titles while working to create new games.
“Zynga is trying to reorganize to move away from just riding the casual game gravy train on Facebook,” said P.J. McNealy, a consultant with Digital World Research. “Their focus continues to shift to more core gaming and prepping for the possibility of real-money online gambling games in the U.S.”
Zynga did not respond to our request for further details.
However, the San Francisco-based company disclosed the “Petville” shutdown just two weeks ago on its Facebook page. In addition, all the 11 shutdowns occurred in December.
Seriously though, as any bad news for Zynga is sure to be received with no small amount of schadenfreude, spare a thought for those genuinely affected. The PetVille Facebook post announcing its closure has been flooded with an outpouring of despair from players. As one user wrote, “My pet is named after my real pet, and has the best mansion! PLEASE DON’T DO THIS!!!!”
Among the 11 titles that are axed or closed to new players include:
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PetVille – Shut down as of yesterday.
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Mafia Wars 2 – Shut down to new players as of yesterday.
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FishVille – Shut down December 5th.
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Vampire Wars – No longer available.
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Treasure Isle – No longer available.
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Indiana Jones Adventure World – Closed to new players as of November 14. Due to go offline for everyone on January 14.
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Montopia – Terminated as of December 21.
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Mafia Wars Shakedown – App no longer available.
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Forestville – App no longer available.
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Mojitomo – App no longer available.
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Word Scramble Challenge – App no longer available.
However, the company mentioned in the post, “In place of ‘PetVille,’ we encourage you to play other Zynga games like ‘Castleville,’ ‘Chefville,’ ‘Farmville 2,’ ‘Mafia Wars’ and ‘Yoville,’” the company told players on its ‘PetVille’ Facebook page. Also, as a gratis, “PetVille” players were offered a one-time, complimentary bonus package for virtual goods in those games.
“Petville,” which lets users adopt virtual pets, has 7.5 million likes on Facebook but only 60,000 daily active users, according to AppData. About 1,260 users commented on the game’s Facebook page, some lamenting the game’s shutdown.
Nevertheless, it is easy to dismiss Zynga’s actions, but core gaming publishers are not averse to shutting down servers as games stop being profitable. The difference here is PetVille and its like are supported by microtransactions, and some users will have inevitably spent significant amounts of money in the game. As publishers increasingly experiment with free-to-play options, this is a problem that could increasingly rear its head.
More so, Zynga has said it is further shifting its focus to capture growth in mobile games. In addition, Zynga has attempted to branch out into other areas to reduce its reliance on Facebook. This is further apparent from a recent SEC filing revealed a new agreement in which Facebook will treat Zynga like any other game developer, meaning no more cross-promotion or other special ties.
Besides, it also applied this month for a preliminary application to run real-money gambling games in Nevada. The prominent game developer is hoping that a lucrative real-money market could make up for declining revenue from games like “FarmVille” and other fading titles that still generate the bulk of its sales.