Zynga is Now Betting on Gambling

By Wolfgang Gruener
published

Zynga will be trying to exit its financial troubles with "real money" games in 2013.

Zynga reported, as expected, a disappointing Q3 that brought sales of $316.6 million, up from $306.9 million in the third quarter of 2011, and a loss of $52.7 million, down from a profit of $12.5 million in the year-ago-period.

FarmVille 2 and ChefVille remain the cash cows of the company, and The Ville, which was launched with high hopes, will be  scaled back and other new games will be canceled. Instead, Zynga is betting on "a full suite of 180 Casino games in the first half of 2013", which the company will launch in a partnership with bwin.party in the UK. The suite will include table games such as slots, roulette and blackjack, Zynga said.

Expect Zynga and bwin.party to leverage their most successful brands to co-market the new games. Zynga said it will be offering "the first-ever, online Farmville-branded real money slots game", and new Zynga poker players will join the bwin.party dotcom player liquidity pool.

The free-to-play concept is not completely out the door, but Zynga has to look at other options, especially since even Mark Zuckerberg has complained that Zynga's payments to Facebook are down by about 20 percent and other social game companies such as King.com are picking up the slack.

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Wolfgang Gruener
11 Comments Comment from the forums
  • abbadon_34
    how the simple farmville have fallen....probably do well for 6 months until the US cracks down and they go bankrupt
    Reply
  • fuzzion
    Coming up next from Zynga

    "hoe services"
    Reply
  • Pennanen
    I guess virtual potatos and carrots dont prove to be much of a profit in the long run :D
    Reply
  • online flash based games are so . . . . 1998
    Reply
  • assasin32
    I wonder who Zynga will rip off for their gambling. I bet they find new ways to comprimise security as well.
    Reply
  • mrmaia
    Zynga should realize that (most) people have had enough of their childish WhateverVille games, their incessant spamming and all the bitching for money. If they don't change their style, even with a gambling giant such as bwin.party backing them, they'll fail over and over until they - and hopefully Facebook - go broke.
    Reply
  • azxcvbnm321
    From what my friend told me, Farmville got annoying with the repeated "reminders" to share his farm with others and do more social networking. They made it so you pretty much had to bother your friends with spam in order to get stuff for the farm, or pay for it using money.

    It was a smart strategy in the beginning to get people to share their farms because nothing makes people spend money more than "keeping up with the Joneses". My friend has a cow, I guess I have to buy one too plus extra barns and stuff to make my farm look as nice as theirs.

    However Zynga took it too far and made it too blatant which turned people off. I think they would've been more successful had they just allowed people the option of upgrading their farms and making purchases without outright pushing them to do so.

    Gambling will always be pretty successful, billion dollar casinos are built for a reason. But I think the whole Xville concept has reached its peak.
    Reply
  • amallica
    Great article. thanks. I gotta say, my favorite part of the article is still the headline. You referred to this type of gaming as "gamling". I'm very happy to see that you are calling it, what it really is. Because all of these games that use real money, really are just gambling.
    Hopefully there are more truthful people out there just like you.
    Reply
  • chomlee
    People who buy coins for these slot games are wasting their money. I have played zynga's slot game and all it does is take the money down to zero every time. Ohhh but you can buy coins for $100.00. Why would I buy coins for a game that I can't cash them back in for. My wife and I go to the casinos often but I would never in a million years give these guys a dime.

    I am not sure what they mean by "real money" but if you ask me they are bordering on ilegal gambling.
    Reply
  • zynga is an excellent failed business model to be written for a thesis by economic college students.
    Reply