Search Results for: Zynga

OMGpop founder and Zynga New York head Dan Porter is leaving the company as is to be replaced by vice president of mobile, Sean Kelly. Porter came on board when Zynga purchased his Draw Sopmtheing studio for$180 million, and his tenure has a few controversial moments: one of which was an open letter regarding claims that the studio copies other studio’s titles. Porter claimed every studio copies another and Zynga wasn’t exempt.

Team Chaos is the new development studio founded by former Zynga Austin vice president and general manager Andrew Busey. Paired up with Chaotic Moon Studios, Busey and his colleagues have formed Team Chaos, and the studio has debuted with free-to-play iOS card game Elements: Broken Lands. It’s out now.

More »

Navigating the mobile gaming universe can be a nightmare, because, well, there are a whole lot of those games. I play 5-10 new ones every week, in fact, but at the same time it’s rare that a new game will break into the top overall downloads chart. And Atari founder Nolan Bushnell tells All Things D that an environment like that will burn out developers.

More »

Some shakeups in the executive quarters of social game giant Zynga this week, as it has announced that its chief information officer for the past two years, Debra Chrapaty, is leaving the company to go work with Nirvanix, a cloud storage company. She will be replaced by Dorion Carroll, who was already a Zynga executive. Zynga has also apparently hired a new vice president of finance, and that person is Atul Bragga, formerly an online and games analyst with Lazard Capital Markets.

Thanks, GI International

Well well well, what have we here? Zynga has relaunched its online gaming portal and removed a requirement to login via Facebook. You can still use your social network ID if you like, but its yet another sign of the casual, mobile and social publisher’s decreasing reliance on Facebook. Reuters reports the relaunch hasn’t impressed investors much; stock climbed just 1% to $3.38 after hours.

Thanks, Joystiq.

Zynga has produced a follow-up to last year’s three-month wonder, Draw Something. Unusually, it didn’t bother with a press release, instead just handing the game over to American Idol host Ryan Seacrest, who tweeted about it. No release details have been shared yet; we may have to wait for Seacrest’s Draw Something tv game show (I know, I know) to surface before the press blitz begins.

Thanks, Eurogamer.

Zynga’s president of games Steve Chiang has explained in a new interview why he feels tablets will become the ultimate gaming platform in the near-future.

More »

Industry veteran Tom Frisina has poured $40 million into a new publishing initiative called Tilting Point. The company aims to publish the best mobile developers, with the whopping initial investment intended to last just three years; it will provide development funds, marketing and consultancy with industry partners like EEDAR. Frisina has some serious chops, having founded EA Partners and served as chairman of thatgamecompany, so this massive bet on mobile is worth thinking about; he’s also brought former EA and Zynga staff on board, as well as some savvy investors. More deals are in the works, but Tilting Point has already signed Signal Mobile, Housemarque, and 1337 Game Design & Senri.

Thanks, GamesIndustry.

Zynga New York head Dan Porter has published an open letter regarding claims that the studio copies other people’s titles. Porter downplayed the claim by suggesting that everyone copies each other.

More »

Twisted Metal developer Eat Sleep Play has released a social endless runner called Running with Friends. Published by Zynga, the free-to-play iOS title is available on the App Store now. Traditionally at home to a more mature audience, Eat Sleep Play had to tone down its gory plans, but VentureBeat reports the game remains unusually competitive and includes destructible environments.

Thanks, Shack News.

RIFT producer Hal Hanlin has left Trion Worlds after four and a half years in order to take on a new role as lead producer at Zynga. “Nothing but love for Trion, but with the maturation of Rift, there was no urgent demand for my specific skillset,” the developer wrote on Facebook.

Thanks, Massively.

Civilization 4 lead designer and Zynga staffer Soren Johnson has signed on to work with Stardock on upcoming games.

More »

Richard Garriott is teasing a reveal later this week, with all signs pointing to a crowd-funded project inspired by his influential RPG series, Ultima.

More »

Red Hot Labs has won $1.5 million in start-up funding in order to build a new mobile gaming platform. GamesIndustry reports the new tech is designed to allow for quick publication across multiple devices. Red Hot Labs was founded by Amitt Mahajan and Joel Poloney, whose social game developer MyMiniLife created technology later used to power Farmville after Zynga sensibly snapped the company up.

Gamespot parent company CBS Interactive, EA, Microsoft and Zynga have signed an amicus brief against the US’s Defense of Marriage Act. They’re the only companies directly involved in gaming to get behind the brief, which EA said is impractical for employers, as it forces them to treat same-sex and different-sex partnered employees under different rules. Additionally, Polygon reports EA will further cement its reputation as the most pro-actively anti-homophobic games industry body by hosting a one-day conference on LGBT issues in video games next week.

Thanks, GamePolitics.

The state of New Jersey has passed a bill intended to make online gambling legal, GamePolitics reports. New Jersey joins Nevada and Delaware in allowing real-money online gambling, something Zynga has bet the bank on. The bill comes into effect when the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement sets an official start date, which is likely to be somewhere between three and nine months from now.

A group of staff laid off when Zynga shuttered its Boston studio last year have formed a new team, Proletariat (“games for the people”). Polygon reports the team has experience at Insomniac Games, Turbine and Harmonix, and will focus on core experiences for mobile and tablet. Follow its progress and check out its first projects, LetterRush and Hug the Sloth, here.

Zynga has closed its Baltimore studio and shuffled staff around in New York and Texas, resulting in “minimal” job cuts.

More »

Draw Something owner Zynga has revealed that the doodling mobile app has been downloaded over a 100 million times since it launched.

More »

EA and Zynga have settled over claims that the Zynga’s “The Ville” infringed on EA’s “The Sims Social,” reports Bloomberg. The report states the actual contents of the settlement were not reveled, only that both parties had reached a settlement. Back in August 2012, EA filed a copyright infringement suit over the social game maker’s Facebook game The Ville, claiming it “copied the original and distinctive expressive elements,” of The Sims Social. The following month, Zynga filed a countersuit stating the copyright infringement claim had “no merit” and was “anticompetitive” among other things. Zynga’s game was eventually shuttered last fall anyway, but not due to the lawsuit: it was because no one played the thing.