Tag Archives: facebook

Zynga quietly laid off 5% of its staff during Apple’s conference yesterday, reminding us yet again that social gaming on the mega-publisher scale has the long term prospects of a terminally ill mayfly.

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Microsoft has confirmed it’s retiring the Facebook and Twitter apps on the Xbox Live dashboard. The news was confirmed to IGN, with the firm stating the apps will no longer be present when the mandatory Xbox 360 dashboard update launches in an effort to “streamline” app functionality. The update is expected around October 23.

Zynga and French social developer Koboko have settled a trademark dispute over the “Ville” suffix, which Zynga attaches to a range of games. Gamasutra reports that the terms of the agreement have been kept confidential, but Kobojo said no money changed hands. Pyramidville was recently renamed PyramidValley, though.

Microsoft has removed Facebook and Twitter apps with the latest Xbox 360 dashboard update, and sources close to the matter claim it’s so users will use the Internet Explorer browser on the console instead.

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Playnomics has released a report on user engagement with social games. The audience management firm discovered that 85% of players in the US didn’t return to a social game after their first day of play.

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Farmville 2 has nearly 50 million users and is Facebook’s most popular app.

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Jagex has opened a new studio in California with staff consisting of Rockstar’s Midnight Club developers.

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A number of Zynga games have noted significant drops in Like totals following a crackdown on fake accounts – sometimes used by scurrilous types to run “pay-per-Like” schemes. You can see the carnage on AppData, and TechCrunch has gathered some interesting before and after comparisons and charts. Texas Hold’em Poker was the worst struck, losing over 100,000 Likes, but the lost fans are just a drop in the 65 million strong user base ocean, so if the publisher did pay for Likes at some point in the past, they’ve served their purpose.

Thanks, Kotaku.

Resident Evil 6′s No Hope Left trailer posits that you are a person with large hands, and everyone you love is dead.

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Ultimate Collector, Portalarium’s collecting game from the mind of Ultima Online’s Richard Garriott, will be backed by Zynga. The social game which has users running all over the place to collect items to display in their virtual homes will launch on the Zynga Platform. Ultimate Collector is currently in limited beta on Facebook. Thanks, Massively.

Puzzle Chasers, the free-to-play Facebook game, has 1,000,000 monthly active users, Konami has announced.

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Light has been shed on the JetSet Secrets domains and trademarks filed by EA earlier this month. Turns out, it’s a hidden object Facebook game where you play as a globetrotting, “brilliant, savvy detective.”

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OnLive is closing out its free Indie Weekend Giveaway promotion by handing out PoP – Methodology Experiment One, Lume, Dear Esther, and Defense Grid Gold for free. To get the games free of charge, you’ll need to visit OnLive’s Facebook page click a link or two, and follow the instructions to redeem your free game. Thanks, Eurogamer.

Rock Band World, a new full-featured companion application for Rock Band 3 and Rock Band Blitz, has been announced by Harmonix.

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Venture capitalist Mitch Lasky, a man with an eye for a rising star in gaming, has said Facebook is losing relevance as a money-making platform.

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Green Day and Rovio have teamed up to promote the band’s upcoming new albums through the medium of Angry Birds Friends. The trio appear as pigs, and you can hear some songs. This is gaming in 2012. Check it out on Facebook or just head through the break to see a trailer smartly summarising the whole experience so you don’t have to have it.

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Robert Kirkman’s tale of post-zombie-apocalypse survival continues its slow creep across all forms of media with the arrival of AMC’s The Walking Dead Social Game on Facebook.

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PS Vita owners can now download the new and improved Facebook app from PlayStation Store. Sony has explained all of the new features in a handy blog post.

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Chefville, the new social game from Zynga will launch this week., and has listed a huge recipe of details to Develop.

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Facebook has announced that 230 million users played games on the social network over the last 30 days – that’s 25% of its user base.

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