Good Riddance! Zynga Shuts Down 11 Games Including PetVille And Mafia Wars 2
December was a tough month for Zynga, the company pulled the plug on 11 games, as the gaming company reallocates resources to more successful titles as well as creating new ones. While this is an important move for Zynga, it couldn’t have been easy, and it has to be even harder for the gamers who spent months or in some cases years playing these games and now have nothing to show for it.
Zynga had a brilliant start by launching titles after titles and grew as Facebook grew. Everything seemed to go great till the IPO. But recently Zynga shares prices have been plummeting. Investors feared it had become bloated, free virality on Facebook had been curtailed, competitors were proliferating, and the shift of Facebook users to mobile from Zynga’s stronghold on the desktop canvas would break the company. Zynga’s share price is down 3.52% to $2.33 from its $10 IPO price a year ago.
Those that weren’t shut down or pulled from the app store already no longer accept new sign ups and will stop altogether next month. Here’s the full list:
PetVille – Shut down December 30th
Mafia Wars 2 – Shut down December 30th
FishVille – Shut down December 5th
Vampire Wars – Shut down December 5th
Treasure Isle – Shut down December 5th
Indiana Jones Adventure World – Closed to new players, shuts down January 14th
Mafia Wars Shakedown – Pulled from app stores
Forestville – Pulled from app stores
Montopia – Shut down December 21st
Mojitomo – Pulled from app stores
Word Scramble Challenge – Pulled from app stores
To numb the pain and try to get gamers hooked on titles that will keep running, Zynga offered people who played FishVille, Adventure World, and some other titles a free bonus package of virtual goods in one of its flagship games CastleVille, ChefVille, FarmVille 2, Mafia Wars, or YoVille.
This might be good news for most Facebook users who were irritated by the repeated requests from these games!
