Social gaming mogul Don Mattrick says shutting down Zynga's China operations will save the company $7 million a year. (Photo : Reuters)
Social games pioneer Zynga announced on Thursday that it is closing its China studio as investors were disappointed with earnings report. By shutting down their China operations, leaving 71 employees jobless, Zynga will be able to save $7 million dollars per year.
The investors' disappointment is attributed to Zynga share's sudden 10-percent drop to $2.39, the market reacting fast following the news that despite gaining the upper ground on mobile gaming services, the company lost $45 million in the last quarter of 2014.
Don Mattrick, Zynga chief executive, was reported delighted over the increase in mobile sales, brought by the continuous swelling of the number of unemployed people having time to play FarmVille, Words with Friends and Looney Tunes Dash and other popular social media games.
Mattick said that "2014 was a year of progress for Zynga as we came together as one team and applied more discipline and rigor to our business."
He added: "In 2015, we will focus on three priorities: driving mobile growth, launching more products in more evergreen categories and building on our social legacy."
Zynga's current priority is focused on launching games specifically for mobile devices. The company is confident that its $1.1 billion in cash is enough to give Zynga the staying power it needed.
Zynga became instant superstar in the social gaming platform when it developed and released popular Facebook games such as FarmVille. While Facebook continues to rise up, Zynga lagged along, unable to innovate in cadence with the most popular social media platform. Zynga lagged in its shift to games played specifically on smartphones, tablets and other mobile platforms.
