This is certainly a unique one from Zynga, as all their past “with Friends” games have been very casual and usually involve some sort of turn-based strategy component, while this one is in the endless-runner genre of sorts, similar to that of Temple Run, which has been a big hit in the App Store for both iOS and Android.

On top of trying to outrun the bulls, players also try to avoid other obstacles that get in the way, and gamers are required to duck and jump over various objects. As with any endless-runner game, it gets harder and harder the longer that you stay alive, but once you eventually hit an obstacle and slow down, it’s game over.

The game was actually developed in collaboration with with Eat Sleep Play (the game studio behind the Twisted Metal video game series and Warhawk), which probably explains the change in tone of this game compared to past Zynga games. However, the graphics are still very reminiscent of classic Zynga games from yesteryear. Running with Friends is only available on iOS currently, but you can grab it at no cost.

Disruptor Bean joined up with HBO to launch the social game on Facebook. The game entered open beta mode on February 21st, and over 500,000 million people have installed the game since then. While 500,000 is an impressive number, the developers at Disruptor Beam know that they need to do more to increase their user base. Jon Radoff, CEO and Founder of Disruptor Beam, says that “partnerships are integral” in making any game successful.

The game takes place in the world of Westeros, where your character plays the role of a Noble. You can choose which Great House you will swear your allegiance to, whether it’d be House Lannister, House Targaryen, House Stark, or any of the other houses. You can also choose your lineage, develop your lands and reputation, and create alliances with friends. The game integrates itself deeply with the HBO series, and each week, after each new episode airs, new content is added to the game.

Publishing Games of Thrones Ascent should do well for Zynga’s revenue, which is most likely the primary reason why they’re doing it. Recently, Zynga had to shut down several of its games in order to lower costs. It also stated that in order to increase revenue, it will transition more into the mobile market this year. Who knows, maybe we will see Games of Throne Ascent, or a similar Game of Thrones game, head to mobile devices soon, hopefully.

[via Zynga]

Aside from the new social features and additional drawing tools, the game promises over 5,000 new words, as well as a free draw mode that you can casually play around with without the need to compete against someone — great for practicing up on your digital finger-painting skills in your spare time.

The original Draw Something game was a huge success at launch, with the developer recently announcing that the game hit 100 million downloads in its first year, and it quickly became the number one social game in the world. Draw Something was initially developed by OMGPOP, but they were eventually bought out by Zynga after the raving success.

However, Zynga has been struggling lately, and the company is continually going downhill. With the massive success that is Draw Something, it’s possible that the sequel could be the company’s saving grace, but as gameplay of Draw Something has slowly started to decline, we’re not quite sure what success Draw Something 2 will see.

Alongside the cancellation of those games, Zynga CEO Mark Pincus stated that Zynga has also decided to cancel the development of two of its major unreleased games. He stated that those games would not have done well for Zynga in the long run, and would only produce short-term boosts for the company. However, on the bright side, Zynga has released Draw Something 2 today in hopes of bringing casual gamers back to its platform, and it also recently released a new card battle game, War of the Fallen, which it hopes will attract more serious gamers to its service.

War of the Fallen will help Zynga in its transition into world of mobile games. Pincus stated that 2013 is the transition year for Zynga to get more into mobile games. Time and time again, analysts have stated that consumers are purchasing more iOS and Android games than they do standard video games, and Zynga wants to take advantage of that. Alongside Draw Something 2 and War of the Fallen, it plans on releasing many more mobile games this year. Currently, Zynga has over 65 million monthly active users playing its mobile games.

Zynga isn’t the only gaming company shutting down its social games in an effort to save money. Earlier this month, EA Games also decided that it needed to shut down several games of its own in order to cut costs. The company stated that it will be cancelling The Sims Social, SimCity Social, and Pet Society on June 14th. These shutdowns aren’t signaling the end of social games, but are suggesting that these companies need to branch off to different platforms in order to find new opportunities of revenue. Will you be missing any of these cancelled games?

[via VentureBeat]

The two apps that Zynga plans on releasing are called ‘ZyngaPlusPoker” and “ZyngaPlusCasino”. ZyngaPlusPoker is self-explanatory, but ZyngaPlusCasino brings you a variety of gambling games, including BlackJack and Roulette. The games will start off as web-based games, and desktop applications at first, but Zynga plans on integrating the apps into Facebook in the future as well.

Zynga hired the former Senior Executive of 888 Holdings PLC (an online gambling poewrhouse), Maytal Olsha, to help it branch into the real-money gambling world. Zynga believes that it will soon be able to tap into its 300 million users, and generate a potential $30 billion from its online gambling services (19.85 billion pounds). After announcing the launch of its online gambling apps, Zynga’s shares rose up 5.5%.

Zynga still has many legal hurdles to jump over in order to bring its real-money gambling apps to the United States, but it still plans on releasing its app in several states where online gambling isn’t illegal. Zynga’s Chief Revenue Officer, Barry Cottle, stated, “Our long term vision is to offer our players the next generation of real money games on multiple platforms in regulated markets worldwide.” It looks like those of us in the U.S. will have to wait a while before we get to gamble away our hard-earned money, but those of you in the UK can experience the joys of gambling starting tomorrow.

[via Reuters]

His departure could have something to do with the comments he made a few weeks ago about Zynga copying games from other companies. He says that his statements were taking out of context, and that what he meant was that Zynga’s games are derivatives of other games, which isn’t anything new in the gaming industry. Nonetheless, his statement angered Zynga CEO Mark Pincus, who demanded that Porter apologize, or else he would be fired. While Porter did apologize, there may have been some residual bad blood between the two afterwards.

Despite Porter’s departure, Zynga is very optimistic about the launch of Draw Something 2, which was leaked last month by radio show host Ryan Seacrest. Zynga’s Chief Operating Officer, David Ko, stated that the company is proud of the work the Zynga New York Team has done and that Draw Something 2 should be more engaging than the original. He stated, “We thank Dan Porter for his efforts in making the Draw Something franchise a success and wish him well in his future endeavors.”

Zynga purchased OMGPOP last year on March 21st for around $210 million. It paid $180 million in cash and the other $30 million in retention. The company purchased OMGPOP after seeing how successful its Draw Something game was. Within six weeks after Draw Something was released by OMGPOP, it was downloaded 35 million times. Sean Uberoi Kelly has some big shoes to fill, however, considering he released CityVille, a social game that attracted over 100 million players within one month, he should be fine.

[via TechCrunch]

Of course, you can still sign in with your Facebook account if you want. Zynga will keep your games’ progress as well as your Zynga friends list in its database. While Zynga wants to distance itself from Facebook, it doesn’t want to burn that bridge entirely. It relies on Facebook for a huge chunk of its traffic, even though it already has a dedicated fan base of over 3 million people.

Along with removing the Facebook login requirement, Zynga plans on implementing a feature next week that will allow players to find fellow gamers through their Gmail or Yahoo contacts list. Zynga will also be implementing its own payment system for its games, instead of relying on Facebook for its transactions. Before, people would be able to purchase premium content on Zynga through Facebook, however Facebook would take a 30% cut from all transactions.

Facebook isn’t too happy about the change, however both companies knew that this move was inevitable. For people who still connect to Zynga via their Facebook accounts, they will only be find fellow gamers that they have previously interacted with. They will no longer be able to see if one of their Facebook friends has just started playing a Zynga game. This change will most definitely hurt Zynga’s transition, but is no way a deal breaker for the game developer.

[via Zynga]

After Seacrest tweeted the game, Dan Porter, the CEO of OMGPOP (the original owner of the game) and Zynga VP, replied saying, “Thanks! So excited to confirm #DrawSomething2 is coming w/ new ways to draw & connect.” Zynga owns the rights to OMGPOP and Draw Something after buying the company out for $210 million last year. The drawing game became an instant mobile success attracting 14 million daily users and 50 million downloads within 2 months.

Draw Something’s fame began dramatically decreasing, seeing its user base drop about 7 million 3 months after it was released in various app stores. Many users began getting bored of the game after the same words would show up time and time again, and advertisements would come and disrupt game play. Zynga hopes that by launching a new refresh to the game, it will be able to draw in its original user base, and hopefully keep them this time around.

It’s speculated that Ryan Seacrest and his Draw Something 2 tweet may have some sort of tie to a new show he will be producing. The new show will be based on a Draw Something and Pictionary. Zynga and Ryan Seacrest see great potential in a drawing-like competition, because teams will have to compete each other, and instead of having the biggest brains or fastest reactions, they will have to be superior artists in order to win. The show is said to be airing something this year. Will you jump back on the Draw Something bandwagon?

[via CNET]

Ko announced, that in order to remain in profitability, the company will be consolidating a few of their offices. This will consist of closing their McKinney, Texas and downtown Austin offices and relocating the employees to the company’s Dallas and North Austin offices. Zynga will also be consolidating their NYC offices by moving staff to their NYC mobile studio.

Unfortunately, Baltimore wasn’t so lucky, and the company has decided to close the Baltimore studio. However, the employees who requested a transfer were able to get one, and “the overall impact of the consolidations on [the] team is minimal.” Of course, some employees were let go, but it’s good news that entire studio’s worth of employees didn’t get the ax.

Ko says that these changes will enable Zynga to focus their “resources on [their] most strategic opportunities.” Ko says that there’s still a lot of work to do, but it seems that the company is confident enough to come out of this strong and deliver future products to casual gamers all over the internet.

Over the last year in Draw Something, 11 billion drawings have been made, with players spending over 28,000 combined years playing the game. The most popular object drawn? A pizza, which has been drawn 22 million times, beating out 11 million drawings of Lady Gaga. Furthermore, there have been five marriage proposals within the game and two breakups, proving that a game can find you love, as well as tear apart fragile hearts.

In total, there are players from 190 countries around the world, with the game hitting #1 at some point in 84 of those countries. At the game’s peak, 3,000 drawings per second were sent, and the most drawings ever by a single player was 36,752, confirming that at least someone playing Draw Something didn’t have too much of a life.

Zynga didn’t say how many active users it currently has compared to the first few months after the game was launched, but it probably isn’t that great. Back in May, after the game had been out for a few months, it was reported that Draw Something lost five million players within a month, and it would be difficult to believe if the game somehow gained those kinds of numbers back later in the year.

In a guest post on VentureBeat, Reynolds discusses the good times that he’s had at Zynga, and reflects on the past at Big Huge Games, as well as co-founding Firaxis Games alongside Sid Meier. However, while we was grateful for the time spent at these studios, Reynolds says he ready to “shift into a different gear,” and is thinking about starting his own small game studio.

Reynolds says that this would give him the power to do things that he wasn’t able to do at Zynga or other past jobs. He says he misses “getting to write code personally and make fun with [his] own hands.” He even says he misses the days of “day-to-day panics of being somewhere small and new and vulnerable, and the excitement of owning a small company.”

Reynolds notes that he wants to take risks and do stuff that might not be up to snuff for a publicly-traded company like Zynga. Thus, Reynolds says that “starting a little studio with a few wingmen…is likely to be on the menu.” As far as what he plans to do at this studio, should he start it up, he notes that mobile strategy games are a big interest for him.

[via VentureBeat]

Image via Flickr

The company announced today that it will be losing an icon in the gaming industry. Reynolds was a part of the design team behind Civilization 2, Alpha Centauri, and Rise of Nations. He joined Zynga in 2009 to head up head up Zynga East in Baltimore, and he eventually helped out with games such as Frontierville and Cityville 2.

Zynga President of Games Steve Chiang says that he and the company “appreciates Brian’s contribution,” and they “wish Brian the best in his next chapter.” Details are pretty scarce as far as when Reynolds’ last day is or if he has already departed the company, but there are no immediate plans to assign a new chief game designer, but it’s certainly a possibility in the future.

Before he joined Zynga, Reynolds was the CEO and creative director at Big Huge Games, as well as a founding team member of Fireaxis Games. Besides the Rise of Nations trilogy, Big Huge Games also developed Catan, the Age of Empires III: The Asian Dynasties expansion pack, and most recently Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning.

[via Polygon]

According to AppData, Candy Crush Saga knocked Zynga’s FarmVille 2 from the number one spot, marking the first time a King.com game has been ranked number one on AppData. In total, King.com has three games in Facebook’s top 10 as far as daily active users are concerned. These are Pet Rescue Saga (with 3.2 million daily users), Bubble Witch Saga (3.6 million daily users), and obviously Candy Crush Saga.

Alex Dale, Chief Marketing Officer at King.com, says that a bug part of the company’s rapid growth and success has to do with the increased popularity casual games, and the declined interest in the resource management genre. Dale mentions that more and more people don’t have time for resource management games, so that’s why many of the Saga games have taken off.

Dale also mentions the strong appeal for puzzle games in this day and age, even after the glory days of Tetris. He mentions that “people have always liked solving puzzles,” and with the addition of a social layer, gamers are playing with friends, “which makes the experience more viral.”

[via Forbes]

However, other titles like Montopia, Mojitomo and Machitsuku weren’t so lucky, with some of them already shut down and joining the other social games Zynga recently took offline. This particular branch of Zynga has been around since 2010, when Zynga and SoftBank purchased Japanese studio Unoh and renamed it Zynga Japan. Now, in just a few short weeks, it will cease to exist.

The dissolution notice delivered by Zynga Japan cited “various reasons” for its closure, but it isn’t hard to figure out the motivation behind shuttering the studio. Zynga has found itself in a bit of a financial rough spot as its casual gaming audience moves onto other games, so the company has implemented a number of cost-cutting initiatives that unfortunately include layoffs. This isn’t the first studio closure we’ve heard about either, as Zynga shut down its Boston studio last year.

The social games company has been looking to break into other markets, teaming up with different developers to help diversify its offerings. We’ve been seeing the product of those relationships already, so hopefully this new direction for Zynga will get it back on the road to profitability, despite the fact that studios had to be closed and people had to lose their jobs along the way. This certainly isn’t the last we’ll hear of Zynga’s financial troubles, so keep it here at SlashGear for more.

Closing video games altogether or eliminating new player registrations also goes along with layoffs for Zynga as the company seeks to squeeze more profit out of its operation. When the company made its IPO, its stock was trading for $10 per share and more recently, it’s trading at only $2.33 per share. So far, Zynga has laid off over 100 employees and closed some of its development offices.

The game PetVille shut down on December 30 along with Mafia Wars 2. FishVille shutdown on December 5 along with Vampire Wars and Treasure Isle. The game Indiana Jones Adventure World is closed to new players but will shut down fully until January 14.

Zynga pulled the videogame Mafia Wars Shakedown from app stores along with Forestville, Mojitomo, and Word Scramble Challenge. The game title Montopia shutdown on December 21. Some players aren’t taking the shutdowns of their favorite videogames well. It’s understandable if you spent years fixing up your virtual aquarium in FishVille and spending your real-world money on upgrades only to have the game unceremoniously canceled, you wouldn’t be happy. Zynga offered players of that title and some others a bonus package of virtual goods for one of the more popular games such as Mafia Wars, Farmville 2 or others.

[via TechCrunch]

Now, the only thing left to do is wait for the board to make a decision on whether Zynga will be allowed to hold a gaming license in the state or not. According to the Wall Street Journal, the Nevada Gaming Control Board will make its decision sometime in 12 to 18 months from now, and even if the decision passes, Zynga will most likely have to go through more approval processes.

Currently, Zynga Poker allows players to use real money to buy extra chips, but players are only able to cash out with virtual currency. Zynga has long been interested in offering real money games to players, but obviously, legal hurdles in the United States have led to delays. Even while Zynga is making progress with the approval process, it’ll still take at least a year before they receive a decision from the board.

At this point, Zynga seems to be scrambling for new revenue streams. The game developer’s stock tumbled to a new all-time low, and the company lost $52 million during the third quarter that ended on September 30. The company has announced major layoffs and even completely shut down some of their studios, and ended several of its games.

[via The Wall Street Journal]

Zynga is no longer contractually bound to exclusively provide its games on Facebook, nor to give Facebook any exclusive games. Likewise, the company is no longer required to have Facebook advertisements on its properties. For Facebook’s part in this, although the social network is now allowed to produce its own games, it stated the it does not have plans to do so.

This, of course, boots Zynga from the Facebook pedestal upon which it perched, wherein it previously had a special status with the social network. While the company has been taking steps to become more independent, it garners most of its revenue from Facebook, making this move a bit precarious. The relationship is symbiotic, however, with Facebook also making a decent amount of revenue from Zynga, although the amount has dropped almost 50-percent in the last year.

Zynga has been under fire lately for its quiet layoff that took place during Apple’s event last month. Employees were backhanded, given only two hours to pack up their stuff and get out. This came after reports that the company experienced a $23 million loss in the second quarter of this year.

[via Wired]

Zynga filed a complaint against its former employee Alan Patmore, who originally worked on CityVille and left the company for Kixeye, becoming Vice President of Product. According to Zynga, Patmore took with him 763 files, which included confidential designs. The company also alleges that Kixeye was aware of the file theft and ultimately accessed the data.

Patmore has confessed to taking the documents specified by Zynga, while Kixeye admits to having accessed two of those files. The company states that neither of the two files contained Zynga trade secrets, however. For this reason, the cross-complaint seeks to have Zynga’s interference in its business relations and recruiting practices put to a stop.

Kixeye’s CEO Will Harbin offered this statement. “We will fight to our last breath to keep this predatory company from accessing our confidential information and best practices. We intend to defend ourselves from Zynga’s legal bullying for as long as it takes to reveal the truth – that Kixeye played no part in this.”

[via CNET]

Earlier in the day, we learned that ASUS was handing out vouchers to consumers in Europe who bought the 16GB Nexus 7 right before its price drop, and then later on Google announced that it will be offering a “price protection program,” for 16GB Nexus 7 purchasers as well. The Nokia Lumia 920T leaked today, and it seems that China Telecom may be getting the iPhone 5 before long. Six companies may be facing fines for alleged CRT price fixing, and after learning a ton about Grand Theft Auto V yesterday, a leak today gave us all new information.

Google said today that it will begin focusing more on mobile than desktop, and Apple was named the most innovative company of the year by Booz and Co. There will be a new Windows 8 security update landing on November 13, and some users are already reporting issues with their Microsoft Surface touch covers. US video game sales were down 25% in October, and today Zynga revealed that it has acquired November Software, even though that purchase happened back in spring.

Angry Birds Star Wars rose to the top of the iOS charts in record time, and BioWare wants your suggestions for its next Mass Effect game. We learned today that climate change might mean a bleak future for the world’s coffee beans, and that the Motorola DROID RAZR M will soon be getting an upgrade to Jelly Bean from Verizon. Finally tonight, we compare the the Nokia Lumia 920 to the HTC Windows Phone 8X in a head-to-head battle, we take a closer look at the FanVision displays used during NASCAR races, and Chris Burns has a new interview with NASCAR driver Brad Keselowski. That does it for tonight’s Evening Wrap-Up, we hope you enjoy the weekend ahead!

This acquisition is another step in Zynga’s transition to focus on mid-core gamers – players who have decent machines as opposed to high-end machines or low-end computers that can only run social and indie games. Mid-core gamers tend to stick with games longer, which means that Zynga could potentially make more money than it can from the social and mobile crowd. It sounds like a good idea, and the team at November is already hard at work on a new game under Zynga’s watch.

That game is called Battlestone, but other than that, the details are pretty slim. We’ll have to wait until the game is further along in development to find out more, but if Battlestone works out, we might see Zynga begin to climb out of this rut it’s worked itself into. Zynga’s player base has slowly been abandoning the company’s social titles as they graduate to mobile games, which has left Zynga is something of a sticky situation.

We’ll see if it works soon enough, but one thing is for sure: Zynga needs to change up its strategy or it risks losing everything. The switch the mid-core gaming might just be the thing that saves Zynga in the long run. What do you think? Will the mid-core gaming crowd bring Zynga back from the brink?

[via TechCrunch]

In a forum post on AnonNews.org, Anonymous has shared some links to data files it has allegedy stolen from Zynga. On November 5, Anonymous says it will “release the key to the data files,” which the group claims outline a Zynga plan to layoff even more employees and outsource those jobs. Not only that, but Anonymous claims it will release games it has stolen from Zynga’s servers for free unless the company halts its plan to layoff more employees.

Anonymous put a video up on YouTube explaining the plan, but it has been taken down since it violates YouTube’s policy against the “depiction of harmful activities.” In the video transcript posted to the AnonNews forum, Anonymous explains, “With a billion dollars cash sitting in a bank we do believe that such actions are an insult to the population and the behaviour of corporations like Zynga must change.” The group has posted a transcript of one of these stolen internal documents, which supposedly outlines the company’s plan to layoff more workers in the US while outsourcing these jobs to India.

This is where the story gets a little difficult to believe, as the transcript from this alleged internal document is very poorly written. In other words, take these claims from Anonymous with a grain of salt, because it’s possible the infamous hacker collective is just making the whole thing up. In any case, November 5 is right around the corner, so we should be finding out if Anonymous is telling the truth soon enough. Stay tuned.

[via Eurogamer]

AT&T delivered its earnings results for Q3 2012 today, and though they were a touch disappointing, they weren’t nearly as bad as Zynga’s report. Facebook’s stock was riding high today after the company’s great financial report yesterday, while Nintendo was another to report underwhelming results for the quarter. Despite the rather negative earnings report, Nintendo still has high hopes for coming quarters, and today one analyst was warning that there will probably be an iPad Mini shortage after launch.

Microsoft is in more hot water with the European Commission over browsers today, and Samsung was given a boost at its Galaxy Note II event this evening by none other than Kanye West. Chevrolet was spotted showing off the engine in the new 2014 Corvette, while we heard a strange assessment that claims Android will surpass Windows in terms of OS market share by 2016. Apple has launched its new Lightning adapters and they aren’t exactly cheap, and we learned that those sexy new iMacs sadly can’t be upgraded.

Corning says that it has Gorilla Glass on 1 billion devices around the world, and Star Citizen reached its Kickstarter funding goal today. Microsoft will be live streaming the keynote from its Windows 8 event tomorrow, and today the company announced the War Games Map Pass for Halo 4. SplashData has released its list of the 25 worst passwords for 2012 and the name of a certain religious big-wig is present on it, and we learned today that the Windows Phone Marketplace has surpassed the 125,000 published apps milestone.

Finally tonight, we have a number of new original articles for you to have a look at. Chris Davies compares the HTC One X+ to the Galaxy S III in a series of benchmark tests, while Chris Burns goes hands-on with a selection of Lenovo Windows 8 convertibles. He also gives us his review of the Galaxy Note II from T-Mobile, and Don Reisinger asks if Apple has simply stopped loving the Mac Pro. That does it for tonight’s Evening Wrap-Up, enjoy the rest of your night folks!

It’s not all bad, though. Revenue was actually expected to be around $250 million, so the amount of money Zynga brought in was actually more than what analysts thought. However, the company is looking for ways to cut down on costs and save a little bit of cash. They implemented a “cost reduction plan” that will hopefully total a pre-tax savings in the fourth quarter of up to $20 million.

The plan already included the downsizing of certain studios and the closure of others. In total, Zynga cut 5% of its workforce and shut down its Boston branch. The company also expects to shut down its Japan and UK studios, but no timeline has been given for that. Zynga also is expecting to shut down 13 of their games, but a lot of their popular games will still remain available.

However, Zynga is reporting slightly higher user numbers this time around. Daily active users were 60 million during the third quarter, which is up 10% from 54 million a year ago, but down from 72 million in the second quarter of this year. Monthly active users were 311 million in the third quarter, up 37% from 227 million a year ago, and also up from 306 million during Q2.

Of course, the rest of the world keeps going when Apple holds an event, so there was plenty of non-Apple news to report today. Earlier in the day we heard that Zynga had laid off a significant number of employees, only to have the company confirms the layoffs later on. We found out today that Xbox Smartglass will arrive on October 26 – the same day as Windows 8 – and that Amazon will soon begin phasing out the Kindle Touch.

Oh hey there awesome Iron Man 3 trailer, when did you arrive? Dropbox for iOS has been updated to add full-resolution image downloads and support for iPhone 5, while Samsung and LG were tipped to release the first 1080p smartphones next year. ASUS gave us a ton of information on its upcoming Windows 8 machines today, and shortly afterward announced that it will be expanding its ZenBook series with two new models. Watch out for those, because ASUS is going to be a big Windows 8 name once the OS hits.

Facebook gave us its earnings report for Q3 today, as did Netflix, and Gearbox confirmed that Borderlands Legends is in fact a real iOS game. Microsoft has added the 250GB Xbox to its $99 subscription offering, and Digital Storm unveiled its new super-slim Bolt gaming PC. Dell has delivered prices for a lot of its Windows 8 machines, and today Sony started teasing its 4K CineAlta camcorder, which will be shown off at an event on October 30. Finally tonight, we get an up-close look at the iPad Mini’s thumb rejection technology and have a review of Microsoft Surface, so be sure to give that a read. That does it for tonight’s Evening Wrap-Up, enjoy the rest of your night everyone!

In all, Zynga will have to layoff 5% of its full time employees. More layoffs may come later on down the road, as Pincus says that executives are proposing the shut down of studios in Japan and the UK. Not only that, but Zynga will be retiring 13 games and “significantly reducing” its investment in The Ville, a game which Electronic Arts is currently suing the company over.

Those 13 games aren’t named in the letter, so it could be any combination of social and mobile games. The fact that Zynga will stop supporting 13 different games and could potentially close down three studios entirely signifies that the company is in a heap of financial trouble, which won’t come as a surprise to a lot of folks.

After all, Zynga has been struggling financially for a while now as its customers move from Facebook to mobile gaming, and tomorrow’s financial report probably isn’t going to bring any good news. Pincus says in his letter that “These reductions, along with our ongoing efforts to implement more stringent budget and resource allocation around new games and partner projects, will improve our profitability and allow us to reinvest in great games and our Zynga network on web and mobile.” Here’s hoping that’s the case, because it’s never good to hear to that people will be losing their jobs.

Zynga’s Austin studio develops the Bingo and The Ville games, and it’s said that the layoffs will inevitably end development and support for these games. It’s also said that employees were given just two hours to clean out their desks, which just adds insult to injury to a very sad day for Zynga and its now-former employees.

It’s said that the layoffs happened during Apple’s iPad mini event on purpose to avoid any press from finding out about it right away, which might explain the short two-hour time frame that the company gave the laid-off employees. It’s also rumored that Zynga’s Boston studio has completely shut down, ending development for Indiana Jones Adventure World.

Zynga hasn’t been doing so well financially. They suffered a $23 million loss in Q2 2012, and they reportedly even handed out stock as an incentive to keep employees from leaving, which is rather odd since they’re now cleaning house almost completely. We’re almost positive that more details will arrive in the coming days, so be sure to stay tuned for more on this surprising development.

[via Gamasutra]

The company apparently had to take such measures after it issued its quarterly report on July 25, which as you may remember, wasn’t so great. According to the Bloomberg report, all full-time employees were given stock options, and even though the company likes to hand out equity bonuses to employees at the end of financial quarters, this was the first time all of Zynga’s employees had access to them.

Will that stock be enough to get these employees to stick around? That’s difficult to say, especially now that Zynga’s stock is sitting below $3 per share. If Zynga can manage to turn its fortunes around, having access to equity in the company will turn out great for those employees, but if the stock price continues to dwindle, employees won’t have much incentive to hang around.

Zynga has been hit hard a lot lately. It’s currently under investigation for a questionable stock sell-off, Electronic Arts is taking it to court over the similarities between The Ville and The Sims Social, and the company just lost its COO after stripping him of his duties. All of this while investors continue to lose faith in the company. Zynga is in pretty rough shape at the moment, and it seems that its worries are only beginning. Stay tuned.

That being said, Schappert could have decided to leave the company because he was stripped of many of his duties just last week. Before the restructuring Zynga is currently going through, Schappert’s role was overseeing game development for the company, a duty he lost last week. We can’t imagine he was very happy about that, and that may be the reason why he left the company.

Still, to hear Pincus explain the situation, it sounds like Schappert left the company on good terms. “We can confirm that John Schappert has left Zynga and its Board of Directors effective immediately,” Pincus said. “John has made significant contributions to the games industry throughout his career and we appreciate all that he has done for Zynga. John leaves as a friend of the company and we wish him all the best.”

Zynga is currently going through something of a financial rough patch, with its stock sinking to all-time lows as its players graduate from Facebook games to mobile games, where Zynga doesn’t have as strong a presence. Stripped of his duties, it’s possible that Schappert decided that he didn’t want to be part of a company that looked to be in major decline. Another interesting thing to note is that Schappert served as COO of Electronic Arts prior to joining Zynga, and Electronic Arts is currently suing Zynga for copyright infringement. Despite the peculiar timing of Schappert’s departure as it relates to this lawsuit, Fortune says that it isn’t believed the lawsuit had on any bearing on Schappert’s resignation.

Zynga doesn’t have a plans to recruit a new COO, but seeing as how they took away the last COO’s duties, it wouldn’t make much sense to hire a new one. Zynga is going to have to work incredibly hard to get back to where it was, so let’s hope the cuts made with this restructuring are worth it. Stay tuned, because we’ll definitely be hearing more about Zynga’s downward spiral soon.

Speaking of Samsung, it seems that the company is gearing up to announce something, but we’re not entirely sure what. At first, Samsung said that the Galaxy Note 2 will be getting a reveal at its August 29 press event, but later backtracked on the statement. The company did begin teasing its planned reveal for its August 15 event, however, and that one seems to be Galaxy Note related.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus both received Ice Cream Sandwich today, while the HP TouchPad is now (partially) running Jelly Bean thanks to an unofficial port of CyanogenMod 10. HTC was in the news a bit today, as it warned that in Q3 it will experience an drop in revenue of up to 23%. On the more optimistic side of things, it appears that the HTC One X+ may be heading to T-Mobile soon, so at least there’s that.

After hearing that Microsoft was planning to drop the Metro branding for Windows 8 and Windows RT earlier in the day, the company went ahead and officially ditched the branding this afternoon. A pair of Sony cameras were leaked today, and OUYA has announced that it will be partnering with iHeartRadio to bring streaming radio to everyone who buys the Android-based game console.

EA had its fair share of headlines today, announcing The Sims 3 Seasons and filing a lawsuit against Zynga for copyright infringement. Electronic Arts claims that Zynga ripped off The Sims Social with The Ville, and the publisher didn’t have any problem accusing Zynga of theft in the complaint it filed. Finally, NASA is gearing up for Monday’s Curiosity rover landing, and you can bet that tensions are high as we head into the weekend.

As always, we have a few original articles we encourage you to check out, such as these interviews with Colin Farrell and Bryan Cranston from Total Recall, which is in theaters today. We also take a closer look at the leak of the final build of Windows 8, and wonder why stuff like this surprises anyone anymore. Enjoy the weekend, folks!

Anyone who follows gaming probably knows that being accused of stealing is nothing new for Zynga. Many of Zynga’s games can look similar to other games out there, and usually the games Zynga is accused of copying were made by small teams of independent developers. This means that most developers don’t have the financial backing to be able to take Zynga to court, so nothing typically happens aside from a bit of bickering.

Anyone who follows gaming also knows that Electronic Arts isn’t a small indie developer. EA has more than enough money to throw at a lawsuit against Zynga, and in a 36 page complaint filed with a federal court in San Francisco, EA makes no bones about pointing out the similarities between the two games. It also gets in a few zingers at Zynga, like this one from point four of the complaint:

As The Sims Social increased in popularity and visibility, Zynga turned to its well-known competitive playbook: “Steal someone else’s game. Change its name,” then cross-promote the Zynga clone to its extensive user base. It has been widely reported that much of Zynga’s current position in the online social gaming market is not the result of creativedevelopment and innovation, but rather has been achieved through cloning rivals’ games.

Electronic Arts is demanding a jury trial, and is seeking damages and all of the profits made by Zynga’s perceived copyright infringement. EA definitely isn’t shy about claiming that Zynga copied The Sims Social, but ultimately that decision rests with the jury (if there’s a trial at all). Stay tuned, because this is sure to be a very interesting lawsuit.

[via AllThingsD]

The word “could” is key here, as you naturally can’t get in trouble for just selling off your shares. What five law firms want to find out, however, is whether or not these people sold off their stock with the knowledge that a bad quarterly report was on the way. The sell-off evidently occurred back in April, when Zynga’s stock was selling at $12 per share. These days, thanks in part to that underwhelming report for Q2, it’s selling at only $3 per share, so you can see why law firms are interested in the circumstances surrounding the sell-off.

Some of Zynga’s biggest players are being investigated, including CEO Mark Pincus, COO John Schappert, and CFO Dave Wehner. Strange as it may seem, Google is also included in this investigation, along with a number of venture capital firms. Zynga has yet to be hit with a lawsuit, but Ars points out that with so many law firms conducting the investigation, it may not belong before the company finds itself dealing with a class-action lawsuit from investors. If that happens, it’ll be nothing but bad news for the social games maker, so stay tuned.

Revenues overall were up 19-percent over the same period, to $332.5m, and up 4-percent quarter-on-quarter. However, online game revenues dropped $1.2m between Q1 and Q2 2012, with stock based expense costing $95.5m in Q2, versus a third of that in Q1.

Zynga is now warning of a less fruitful end to 2012, with delays in launching new games and a faster than expected decline in existing titles. Part of the problem, according to Zynga CEO Mark Pincus, was down to changes Facebook made to its site, which caused Zynga’s engagement and bookings fall.

What remains to be seen is how Facebook performs, with the site expected to reveal its own financial results later today. The figures will be the first since Facebook floated its IPO back in May, which saw a record opening but subsequently proved lackluster for investors.

The announcement came from Zynga CEO Mark Pincus during a conference call today with investors. Just looking at some of the reports when it comes to this market makes it very easy to realize why the company would want to go down this new path. For example, Zynga users currently spend an average of $2 – $3 per month. Of course, multiply that by millions of users and you’re doing pretty well. But by comparison, online gambling sites typically see revenues of around $300 per paying user per month.

It will be the first time such a major name outside the world of gambling hopes to make it big in the online gambling world. Every other noted video game publisher has shied away from it because of many issues, not the least of which is that real-world gambling gives publishers an automatic “AO” rating from the ESRB, and most publishers are ingrained in the video game rating system so deeply that they don’t dare launch a game that doesn’t have that group’s stamp of approval. Of course, the legalities also play a huge role in this. This is going to be an interesting story to watch.

[via VentureBeat]

Some more good news for Zynga: the company reported that daily active user numbers have climbed to 72 million, up from 59 million in Q2 of 2011. Monthly active user numbers also got a boost in Q2 2012, with Zynga claiming 306 million MAUs, up 34% from Q2 2011′s 228 million. In keeping with the company’s trend for the quarter, monthly unique users also experienced growth, getting up to 192 million as compared to the 151 million it was able to boast at the same time last year. The company’s adjusted earnings-per-share came in at just a penny, which failed to meet expectations of $0.05 per share.

So, it’s a bit of both good and bad for Zynga. Having to post a loss is never good, but at least Zynga managed to get its active user numbers up during the quarter, which is one of the big things investors were worried about. However, user numbers don’t mean everything for Zynga, as most of its users don’t pay anything to play its games. Zynga makes most of its money from a small subset of its larger user base, so the best user numbers in the world don’t mean anything if none of them are paying.

Are Zynga’s fans leaving the company behind as they begin to graduate from Facebook social games to mobile games? That remains to be entirely seen, but Zynga is definitely one to watch as we head into quarters 3 and 4 of 2012.

Yesterday, Hasbro had actually reported its second quarter earnings, which showed a drop of 25 percent in profit as a result of falling sales in most major categories. But despite a lackluster earnings report, the company is optimistic that the partnership it has developed with Zynga can bring it back up by bringing together a digital a digital gaming experience with an analog one.

Zynga games are played by nearly 240 million people on Facebook each and every month. Nobody knows exactly how demand there may be for offline Zynga or Farmville products, but the partnership is likely to benefit both companies. Online gaming company Rovio is proof that it can work, with 30 percent of its revenue coming from merchandising and licensing in 2011.

[via TechCrunch]

The plan was announced this week and intends to allow players to play against each other whether they’re playing on the web, Android devices, iOS devices, Facebook, or Google+. The core of the service will be focused on the Zynga message center found on Facebook and Zynga.com. That message center contains the player’s friends list and a feed with the activity of all of their friend’s gaming status.

The system can even suggest games based on what games the user and people on the friends list are already playing. The platform will also allow users to connect using the recently launched real-time multiple player feature that allows players to play with or against each other simultaneously rather than typical turn-based play. Zynga hasn’t offered a firm date for the launch of its Zynga With Friends network simply saying it will come in the “near future.”

[via AllthingsD]

This new Farmville game will indeed also be able to be played via Facebook or straight through Zynga’s own web-based network, as well as through official apps for both iOS and Android. This game will also feature more intensive “crafting” of items, with the creating and harvesting of one item making way for another. This game will be created in hopes that Zynga can recapture the peak power of the first Farmville game which hit its tip back in March of 2010 with 82 million users playing at least once a month.

Zynga also let the world know that they’d be pushing several other titles soon, including but not limited to: Matching with Friends, The Ville, Zynga Elite Slots, ChefVille, and Ruby Blast. Zynga also announced that they’d be partnering with Atari who will be releasing a new game title for its 40th anniversary in a team effort that will shock the world!

Stay tuned for more Zynga action, and check out the timeline below to keep up to date on all things Zynga as well!

[via BBC]

Cowen & Co analyst Doug Creutz wrote in a report that Zynga’s daily active usage had dropped 8.2 percent in May. Cruetz believes that more consumers are switching to mobile gaming as it is playble any time and anywhere. He offers a neutral rating on Zynga’s shares, estimating the price at $5.55.

Zynga games, such as Farmville, are mostly played through Facebook via the web. Facebook takes a cut of the sales made from virtual goods, while Zynga gets access to Facebook’s massive user base.

However, this close relationship with Facebook seems to have done more harm than good lately with the social network’s botched IPO. Increased mobile usage is seen as a negative for Facebook because it has yet to figure out how to make money off of mobile users.

[via Washington Post]

The last Zynga acquisition was OMGPOP, the creator of Draw Something. That news made a lot of headlines, but then resulted in a lot of criticism when Draw Something’s popularity declined. Zynga was accused of being short-sighted by paying $500 million for a company that only had a one-hit wonder.

Buzz Monkey, though, already has multiple proven successes, such as Rinith Island, Fluid Monkey, and Block Rogue. These are all mobile games, and Zynga has voiced a significan desire to break furhter into the mobile games space. That’s what the OMGPOP buy was all about, so this acquisition may be proof that it wasn’t good enough. In addition, this time the value of the deal was kept secret.

[via VentureBeat]

We’re talking about Joshua Ortega, who has a highly impressive resume. He was written for Marvel Comics, DC Comics, TokyoPop, and pretty much every other major comic book and graphic novel publisher in the US. His work has been seen in properties like Star Wars, Spider-Man, Star Trek, and Battlestar Galactica. Most recently, he was involved with the story of Gears of War 2, which gained significant acclaim for its masterful plot and writing style.

So it would seem to be counter-intuitive that he would accept a position at a casual gaming company that focuses more on quick, accessible gameplay than high-concept storylines. He joins the company as “senior narrative designer” and will be resonsible for upcoming online and mobile titles. This could represent a push for Zynga to start pushing its limits. We’ll see.

[via VentureBeat]