Zynga Games are the developers behind some of the most popular free-to-play games available on Android, such as Words with Friends and NFL Showdown: Football Manager. They’re even responsible for some of the most recognizable time wasters on Facebook, producing titles like Farmville and Mafia Wars, and have sometimes been criticized for their predilection for the F2P Format.
It’s said that F2P games often target ‘whales’, a small percentage of players who have both the income and inclination to repeatedly purchase premium items or pay to skip wait times, and it seems like Zynga might need to sharpen their hooks after reporting a loss of over $225 million this year. The company expect to make further losses of $56 million in the first quarter of 2015 and have plans to close their office in China to cut costs. They took similar measure last year cutting over 500 jobs and closing offices in New York, Los Angeles and Dallas.
Despite this downturn in the company’s fortune, Zynga’s chief executive, Don Mattrick, recently stated that “monthly mobile customers are up 87 percent year over year”. So maybe it isn’t that Zynga are missing their mark just that they’re beginning to drive their whales to extinction. You can find out more here.
