Tag Archives: Zynga
Zynga Close To Filing IPO [RUMOR]
Social gaming company Zynga is preparing to file for an IPO according to sources with AllThingsD. A filing with the SEC is expected to happen sometime next week. Based on Zynga’s last round of funding, the company has a valuation of $10 billion. Zynga has about 250 million people actively playing their games every month. Zynga supposedly made about $400 million profit last year on around $850 million in revenue. Today Zynga has about 1,500 full-time employees across 13 offices in 6 countries. Goldman Sachs is believed to be one of the bankers in the Zynga deal. [AllThingsD]
Categories Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Goldman-Sachs, Zynga
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Zynga Acquires Social Game Studio DNA Games
Social gaming company Zynga is acquiring DNA Games. This is Zynga’s 14th acquisition since the last year. Zynga is interested in both the talent and the company. DNA Games developed several hit social games such as Casino City, Slot City, and Bar World. DNA reaches about 2.4 million monthly active users on Facebook. Casino City has about 1.5 million monthly active users, Slot City has about 438,000 actives, and Bar World has about 382,000 actives.
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Categories Bain Capital, Bain Capital Ventures, Battery Ventures, DNA Games, Facebook, Jon Lee, Zynga
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Zynga Hires The Team Behind Cocos2d
Zynga has hired the team behind Cocos2d Ricardo Quesada and Rolando Abarca. Cocos2d is an open source development engine that is used by Atari, Zynga, Gamevil, ngmoco, etc.
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Categories Cadir Lee, Cocos2d, Ricardo Quesada, Rolando Abarca, Zynga
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Zynga Acquires Mobile Game Company Wonderland Software
Social gaming company Zynga has acquired United Kingdom mobile game company Wonderland Software. Zynga has 259 million monthly active users, but a majority of them play web-based games. Wonderland Software is best known for developing a game called GodFinger, which was published by Ngmoco. Wonderland SOftware CEO Matthew Wiggins will become the general manager of Zynga Mobile UK. He will report to Zynga SVP of mobile David Ko. Wonderland Software started in 1999. [VentureBeat]
Categories Matthew Wiggins, Wonderland Software, Zynga
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Zynga Hires John Schappert Away From Electronic Arts’ COO Position
Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ:ERTS) just saw their chief operating officer John Schappert get hired away by social gaming Zynga. Zynga’s rivalry is intensifying as their internal valuation surpassed EA’s around October 2010. Ironically, about a year ago Schappert said at a conference that the future of gaming is acquired franchises like The Sims and Madden. [BusinessInsider]
Categories EA, Electronic Arts Inc., John Schappert, Zynga
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Zynga Acquires Music Gaming Company JamLegend
Social gaming company Zynga has acquired JamLegend, a music gaming company. JamLegend is a start-up that was planning on competing directly with Rock Band and Guitar Hero. JamLegend will be shut down and the team will be absorbed into Zynga.
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Categories Andrew Lee, Arjun Lall, Hadi Partovi, JamLegend, Ryan Wilson, Zynga
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T. Rowe Price Reveals Social Media Investments: $190.5M In Facebook, $71.8M In Zynga, And $86.8M In Groupon
T. Rowe Price Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:TROW) has revealed some of their investments in social media companies. They have invested a total of $190.5 million in Facebook as of the end of March. The company also invested $71.8 million in Zynga and $86.8 million in Groupon. Two years ago T. Rowe participated in a $100 million round in Twitter along with Insight Venture Partners, Benchmark Capital, and Morgan Stanley. Other investments include $10 million worth of equity in Ning, $35 million equity in Angie’s List, and $114 million equity in YouKu.com. [NYT]
Categories Angie's List, Facebook, Groupon, Ning, T. Rowe Price, Twitter, Youku, Zynga
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Flock Browser Shutting Down On April 26
Back in January 2011, Zynga hired the team behind the Flock social browser for the talent. On April 26th, support for the Flock browser will end. Flock started off on the Mozilla platform, but ended up switching over to Chromium. At its peak, Flock had about 10 million users. Below is the message that Flock is sharing with their users:
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Categories Flock, Zynga
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Zynga Hires PokerTableRatings.com Team
Zynga has announced the 11th acquisition in the last 11 months. They have hired the team working at MarketZero, which is best known for creating the website PokerTableRatings.com. That website is the largest portal for tracking the stats of online poker players. The acquisition details are unknown. Zynga has a poker game on Facebook, but it does not cost real money to play. Zynga will not be operating MarketZero’s existing business, but they will be spinning it off to a separate entity. Zynga wanted to acquire the Austin-based team for their expertise. The founders of MarketZero include Gustavo Abdala, Amir Elaguizy, Nir Leibovich, Timothy Sullivan and Jason Wang. [VentureBeat]
Zynga Hacker Ashley Mitchell Gets Two Years Jail Time For Stealing $11.4 Million
Ashley Mitchell will get two years of jail time for stealing $11.4 million in virtual poker chips from Zynga. He sold one-third of what he stole for a small price of £53,612. Making things even odder, he used his neighbor’s insecure WiFi connection to do the criminal deed. [Engadget]
Categories Ashley Mitchell, Zynga
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