Casual gaming giant Zynga is scrapping or limiting access to many of its most popular games in order to cut costs.
In the past week, it has shut down Petville, Mafia Wars 2, FishVille, Vampire Wars, Treasure Isle and Montopia.
Other games such as Mafia Wars Shakedown, ForestVille, Word Scramble Challenge and Mojitomo have been removed from app stores.
Indiana Jones Adventure World has stopped accepting new players, and will shut down on January 14. The company is also reducing its investment in The Sims-style game The Ville.
Zynga CEO Mark Pincus said the cull was necessary to "streamline our operations, focus our resources on our most strategic opportunities, and invest in our future".
In the same announcement, posted on the company's blog, Pincus said 5 percent of the company's workforce would be fired as part of an "overall cost reduction plan that also includes significant cuts in spending on data hosting, advertising and outside services, primarily contractors".
Tech news site TechCrunch says Zynga's share price has been "decimated" over the past year – falling from US$10 at its IPO to US$2.33 today.
The company has offered players of the defunct titles compensation in the form of virtual goods in its existing games such as CastleVille, Mafia Wars and FarmVille 2.
3 News
source: newshub archive
