back to article Zynga deactivates 500+ employees in major layoff

Online gaming company Zynga is getting rid of 18 per cent of its staff so its remaining employees can have enough resources to stay alive in a mobile device–led world – or so their CEO says. The FarmVille and DrawSomething gambling gaming company announced plans to get rid of over 500 people on Monday in a memo from its …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Every time I see this kind of story about Zynga, I revive a little on the inside.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Meh

      @David W.

      Eh, I'd rather see the same story about EA......

  2. Don Jefe
    Unhappy

    We All Know

    Any time someone says 'We all know (x) is necessary' it is always the worst kind of bullshit. It is always a big FU to the employees who probably got escorted out by security and a bunch of ManagOSpeak to the press. I just wish they would speak in a straightforward manner and at least act like they cared.

    1. Chairo
      Trollface

      Re: We All Know

      I just wish they would speak in a straightforward manner and at least act like they cared.

      We All Know - they are in their position exactly because they can handle the ManagOSpeak, so this will not happen. "We are sorry that we have to fire you to increase our annual bonus" - Nah, never!

  3. The Nazz
    Unhappy

    Just want to say .....

    Harsh sub-heading.

    1. Turtle

      @The Nazz: Re: Just want to say .....

      "Just want to say ..... Harsh sub-heading."

      That's the very comment I came here to post. Not really very funny at all.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Just want to say .....

      Under normal circumstances I might agree, but Zynga is an edge case - they're one step up from herbal pill pushers and 'debt refinancing' companies. EA, Google, and Microsoft may commit evil in the course of executing their business models, but Zynga's business model and product itself (I won't flatter them by suggesting they have more than one) is and always has been explicitly predatory. And what's more, Pincus has actively bragged about it.

      I won't go as far as to condemn everyone who works for him as evil, but I find it hard to muster general sympathy in this context.

      1. Turtle

        @David W.

        You're making the very foolish assumption that, for the people who got fired today, working for Zynga was their ideal career, and not, let's say, a job that they were compelled by circumstances to take because all available alternatives were worse.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: @David W.

          That's why I'm -not- condemning the individual employees outright. But while I understand your point, at some level I think you have some amount of responsibility when you work for rat bastards. Most people working at Zynga aren't facing life on the streets or day labor in a Dickensian sweatshop as an alternative.

          And yeah, the guy doing the pixel art isn't as responsible as the one tweaking the 'gameplay' models. It's not simple. But broadly, if you go work there, you know what you're helping to do. And it's not good.

  4. Eddy Ito

    So the question becomes how many start selling mobile games on iTunes/Play?

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "Work With Friends"?

    Not any more.

  6. Robert Helpmann??
    Childcatcher

    What does that even mean?

    Zynga is sacking its staff – "reducing our cost structure" – to give the remaining employees "the runway they need to take risks and develop these breakthrough new social experiences."

    I will take a stab at this: "We are firing that lot pour encourager les autres. Those left can all take a flying leap for all I care; I have a golden parachute."

    Such a shame this was not applied to the upper echelon as the Voltaire school of management might indicate.

    1. George of the Jungle
      Headmaster

      Re: What does that even mean?

      I laughed at the "Voltaire school of management"!

      "Reducing cost structure" is one of those shite phrases they learn when studying for a MBA, which is (IMHO) a shite degree. Now a MBA from Harvard? A golden turd perhaps.

      (Pedant pic seems appropriate in this case.)

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It really isn't all that surprising...

    While they may have decent graphics in their products, the coding mistakes and over-bloating are driving many away. The over-bloating causes a lot of memory to be consumed. I've seen people playing with no problems for a long time and then the games get slower and slower over time as they advance. Then come the flash crashes and the troubles to get the games to even load. In many cases, adding more memory to the machine has allowed them to resume playing...until the game gets even larger and they have to buy more memory.

    But besides the bloat and memory consumption, there is, quite simply, the poor coding. When collects items by helping others outside the game in the desired manner and those items never show up inside the game, well something is very wrong. Then you have the items that you collect and build within the games that don't appear, disappear or otherwise stop working. If one hasn't played the games then this may not make any sense but it is what happens.

    I just hope that they are keeping the good coders or they are going to be loosing more faster.

  8. Spoonsinger

    Sorry but.....

    "Zynga, like every other consumer-oriented company, has been adversely affected by the rapid shift to mobile, as business models built for the desktop era have a hard time dealing with the lower ad fees generated from mobile devices."

    Errmm, haven't they always been just purveyors of trashy iOS/Android 'games', and had really nothing to do with desktop stuff? Or am I missing a whole other side to their general crappyness?.

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