CityVille

Zynga shuts down Baltimore office, consolidates in Texas, N.Y.

Zynga is shutting down its Baltimore office and consolidating its presence in Texas and New York, the company announced today.

The Baltimore closure, which affects about 1 percent of Zynga's roughly 3,000 employees, comes shortly after the company shut down the studio's CityVille 2 game.

Zynga offered the Baltimore employees a chance to transfer to other positions in the company, Zynga COO David Ko wrote in the blog post announcing the moves. About half of the approximately 30 Baltimore employees decided to stay.

Zynga will also consolidate teams in offices located in McKinney, Texas, with its downtown … Read more

Zynga faces retaliatory lawsuit brought by Kixeye

Kixeye took another stab at Zynga in the ongoing legal battle between the two gaming companies.

The game maker announced today that it filed a cross-complaint against Zynga in the Superior Court of California. The move comes as retaliation for an earlier suit that Zynga filed against both Kixeye and one of its employees who formerly worked on Zynga's CityVille game.

"We will fight to our last breath to keep this predatory company from accessing our confidential information and best practices," Kixeye CEO Will Harbin said in a statement to CNET today. "We intend to defend … Read more

Zynga goes 'whodunit' with 3D CityVille 2

As critics continue to ding Zynga for a lack of mobile revenue, the company is making another bet on one of its most popular desktop franchises, CityVille.

Zynga released CityVille 2 today, a 3D and more interactive game based on the original's premise of building a own city in which you are mayor. At its height, CityVille had 100 million players. Today, that number is down to 16.2 million monthly active users and 2.1 million daily active users.

Mark Nelson, the director of design for CityVille 2, said the orignal CityVille, which launched nearly two years ago, … Read more

Zynga sues former exec for 'wholesale theft' of data

Alan Patmore left his job as general manager for Zynga's CityVille in August and headed over to a job as VP of product at Kixeye -- a much smaller social-gaming company also based in San Francisco. Zynga is now saying that when Patmore stepped down, he stole important company trade secrets.

In a complaint filed in Superior Court in San Francisco on Friday, the gaming company alleges that Patmore nabbed data files, financial information, unreleased game design documents, and more.

"Zynga respects the rights of its employees to resign and seek employment with other companies," the gaming … Read more

Zynga teases new CityVille 2 amid company struggle

Zynga is now testing a sequel for "CityVille," the company wrote on its blog today.

The social games creator promises are more "visually rich game" with "CityVille 2," which was released today to specific players for testing.

"It has all the features in CityVille that players love -- from neighbor visits and crews to buildables -- blended with some of the innovations we introduced in CastleVille and FarmVille 2 such a crafting and 3D graphics," according to the post.

The company has said -- and Wall Street seems to agree -- that … Read more

Newest Zynga title CastleVille goes live

Wanna be king of your own castle? Then go to it with Zynga's newest online game: "CastleVille."

Zynga, the world's top social games developer, today began rolling out its newest title in the company's popular 'Ville franchise. It's now live on Facebook where it has already attracted over a million likes.

CityVille and FarmVille are Zynga's most popular games with 54 million and 28 million monthly actives, respectively. The San Francisco-based company, which is widely expected to ready itself for an IPO after the Thanksgiving holiday, is surely betting hordes of online gamers … Read more

Zynga's CityVille arrives on Google+

CityVille, Zynga's hottest game on Facebook, is now on Google+.

Today Zynga announced CityVille's arrival on Google's new social-gaming platform. "Ultimately, we want to make our games accessible to everyone, everywhere--no matter where they play or what platform they play on."

This is really good news for Google. Getting into games in a big way with popular titles should help drive engagement on its fledgling social network. Launched as a "limited field test" in June, Google+ recently opened up publicly and has attracted 43.4 million members, AllThingsD is reporting. To really fly, … Read more

Zynga delaying IPO?

Social-gaming site Zynga may delay its initial public offering until November as a result of the current turmoil in the stock market, according to the New York Post.

Zynga was looking to raise up to $1 billion by going public as early as September. But citing sources "with knowledge of Zynga's plans," the Post said the company has been concerned by the stock market's recent up-and-down ride, prompting it to back off on its IPO for now.

Launched in 2007, Zynga has turned into a force for online social gaming with such popular titles as FarmVille, … Read more

Game developer: Social games will crash and burn

Denis Dyack, a longtime developer and founder of game studio Silicon Knights, doesn't see a healthy future for social gaming.

"It is damaging traditional gaming for sure but...how it's going to work out is anyone's guess," Dyack said in an interview with Industry Gamers published yesterday. "The trend that I see is it's probably going to be one of the biggest bubbles and explosions that our industry's seen in a long time and I think when it crashes it's going to crash very hard."

Dyack told the gaming publication … Read more

Report: Angry Birds coming to Facebook in May

Angry Birds won't be making its way to Facebook anytime soon, a new report claims.

According to The Next Web, which says it spoke with Rovio's Peter Vesterbecka, the wildly popular game won't be available on Facebook until May, two months after it was expected to launch on the social network.

Last week, Rovio announced that Angry Birds would be coming to Facebook and said it would launch in March. Vesterbecka reportedly told The Next Web that he was "not sure how the March date got in there."

Rovio did not immediately respond to request … Read more