Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Looks Like Zynga Just Bought OMGPOP For $200 Million

allthingsd.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 160 posts

Re: Looks Like Zynga Just Bought OMGPOP For $200 Million

#151

Post by rdl »

tptacek wrote: post #146
rdl wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think THIS was a talent acquisition so much as a super successful game, so successful Zynga couldn't rip it off and kill it, but there are definitely large talent acquisitions in recent history: * Powerset. ~$100mm, July 2008, to Microsoft. * Friendfeed, ~$50mm, August 2009, to Facebook. * Slide, $228mmm August 2010, to Google. (Takeaway: sell your company in the summer.)

Powerset and Aardvark both seem like pretty compelling responses. A 9-figure talent acquisition! I concede my case.

The impressive thing is that the powerset guy actually used ("we can do a talent acq for $1-3mm per engineer" if we fail) in his recruiting pitch to hire people (and, presumably in his fundraising).

There's probably a good business model in being an "academy startup" which both shoots for the moon AND is a great place to work, builds skills, and can do a talent sale (or tech sale, maybe) if the product is unsuccessful, building that into the company from the start. That's probably what I'd do, especially if it were based outside the bay area and maybe strongly allied with a great school but lacking other good local employers (Waterloo, CMU, etc.)

Re: Looks Like Zynga Just Bought OMGPOP For $200 Million

#152

Post by tomjacobs »

dc-tech-fan wrote: post #96
untog wrote: post #10

Kind of sad. I mean, congratulations to OMGPOP, but I'd really like to see a decent competitor to Zynga out there. Their games are slow, buggy and overly instrusive, but no other company has the kind of traction they do. OMGPOP could have taken the hard route and built themselves up from the success of Draw Something. Oh well.

Try Doodle or Die – it’s independently run by four random guys (disclaimer: i’m one of them). It’s more like Telephone than Pictionary. Much more freedom and the results are hilarious. http://doodleordie.com

Are you going to make an iPad/iPhone version?

Re: Looks Like Zynga Just Bought OMGPOP For $200 Million

#153

Post by gurkendoktor »

bobbles wrote: post #110
furyofantares wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate Zynga games because of how buggy and slow they are. But it's not like Zynga doesn't add value. The examples I've seen of Zynga copying the base of other games also have them making significant adaptations to better fit the market. Zynga really understands the market a lot better than many of the little guys, and they add lots of value to lots of users that way. I'm curious if there are counterexamples.

This is really disappointing for me.. (well.. from a games on my phone perspective) I used to really like Words with Friends. Then zynga did an app update where the icon was more about the zynga logo than the Words with Friends logo. (reverted after user backlash) Then it was more and more 'buy our other games!' notifications. Then the facebook integration slowed the app down so much it took 3-4x as long to actually…

I actually found Draw Something to be pretty bad even before reading this. The whole game seems to be written in a too portable manner, ie., all UI elements self-written and noticeably different from UIKit, no GameCenter, the sizes are all weird...

I hope somebody does the reverse thing of Zynga and builds a LIGHTER, Apple-like version of it, I'd jump ship in an instant. Especially after going through the painful WWF fiasco. It might even be possible to get an App Store spotlight by being more "loyal" to Apple's way of doing things, and obviously not being portable.

Re: Looks Like Zynga Just Bought OMGPOP For $200 Million

#154

Post by gyardley »

desult wrote: post #111
gyardley wrote: post #27

Wow. Charles deserves a whole lot of credit for sticking it out over the last six years - my impression until recently was that they were having a hard time staying open. Congrats to all involved!

Charles left a year ago.

Hahaha - well, there you go. Thanks for the update.

Re: Looks Like Zynga Just Bought OMGPOP For $200 Million

#155

Post by danssig »

joejohnson wrote: post #67
samstave wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really sad actually. The only reason why Zynga bought them is because Draw Something is so high profile, that there was no way Zynga could steal it. As I said over on Quora, this really sucks as Zynga is a despicable company. Surely, the folks at OMGPOP had been worried that Zynga would try to steal this game, as they have done every one else -- and I would be interested to know what they thought of Pincus' character…

Why do you think Zynga is a despicable company?

Did you just discover the internet today? The list is endless. They hired people when they were small at lower wages with stock options. Then when they made it big they took those options away! The scumbag CEO claimed he was right because if he didn't do this a cook might become rich, as if a cook has no right to get FU money for taking a risk. Every game they have is a rip off of other people's. The CEO has said in interviews that he's done ever evil thing there is to do to gain success.

If you don't think Zynga is a despicable company than I can't imagine you believe this is such a thing.

Re: Looks Like Zynga Just Bought OMGPOP For $200 Million

#156

Post by danssig »

beatle wrote: post #115
untog wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it isn't. But up until recently OMGPOP was strangely hesitant to make mobile games (as relayed to me by a friend who used to work there). Look at their entries in the app store- they have three games. They went in a new direction and it paid off. I would have been interested to see them try to go further with it.

they can use part of the $210M to start another company.

If Zynga doesn't dilute it somehow before the lock-in period is over.

Re: Looks Like Zynga Just Bought OMGPOP For $200 Million

#157

Post by erichocean »

erichocean wrote: post #147
ChrisNorstrom wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't "borrowing". This is IP theft. And these aren't "ideas" these are full blown products. "Ideas are cheap, it's the implementation that really matters." The games that Zynga copies were not "ideas" they were IP. And Zynga wasn't inspired by them. Zynga flat out, straight up, cloned them. When you work your ass off, sacrifice time with your family, your savings, and invest it into building a profitable flash…

> This is IP theft. In light of pg's recent article amounting to "information wants to be free" and there's nothing we can do about it... How, exactly, is what Zynga is doing different from pirating films, music, or software? In both cases, it seems to me that the original creator hasn't lost anything. They still have their game. They still get to say "they" made it. Etc. Are we really only against pirating when it h…

If you're going to down vote, at least explain why.

Re: Looks Like Zynga Just Bought OMGPOP For $200 Million

#158

Post by dc-tech-fan »

tomjacobs wrote: post #152
dc-tech-fan wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try Doodle or Die – it’s independently run by four random guys (disclaimer: i’m one of them). It’s more like Telephone than Pictionary. Much more freedom and the results are hilarious. http://doodleordie.com

Are you going to make an iPad/iPhone version?

I started to build one using Corona SDK but the drawing part wasn't smooth enough so we're going to start over using native code.

Re: Looks Like Zynga Just Bought OMGPOP For $200 Million

#159

Post by phillmv »

dc-tech-fan wrote: post #96
untog wrote: post #10

Kind of sad. I mean, congratulations to OMGPOP, but I'd really like to see a decent competitor to Zynga out there. Their games are slow, buggy and overly instrusive, but no other company has the kind of traction they do. OMGPOP could have taken the hard route and built themselves up from the success of Draw Something. Oh well.

Try Doodle or Die – it’s independently run by four random guys (disclaimer: i’m one of them). It’s more like Telephone than Pictionary. Much more freedom and the results are hilarious. http://doodleordie.com

Make it into a mobile app that lets me sync with friends on facebook or twitter or w/e.

Re: Looks Like Zynga Just Bought OMGPOP For $200 Million

#160

Post by ChrisNorstrom »

erichocean wrote: post #157
erichocean wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is IP theft. In light of pg's recent article amounting to "information wants to be free" and there's nothing we can do about it... How, exactly, is what Zynga is doing different from pirating films, music, or software? In both cases, it seems to me that the original creator hasn't lost anything. They still have their game. They still get to say "they" made it. Etc. Are we really only against pirating when it h…

If you're going to down vote, at least explain why.

Wasn't me, I actually think it's a good question, really made me think. In this instance I don't believe an "all or nothing" attitude about all IP is healthy. The same way an all or nothing attitude about taxes, war, death penalty, and freedom of speech is healthy. Too much protection and we get patent trolling, not enough protection and we get IP theft leading to less innovation and unfair treatment of the inventors. Naturally, our instinct is to share something with friends when we discover it. Which is why music and movies are pirated so much. Stealing IP, that's also a human instinct passed down from our lovely evolutionary primate relatives. To an extent it's beneficial (creative commons, github forking, open source projects) and too much stealing/borrowing is destructive to its inventors while really beneficial to the stealing party (Like the way China's been "borrowing" high speed rail and maglev technology from Siemens, Transrapid, and other companies and re-patenting everything with slight changes so they can avoid licensing costs and can resell the technology as "Chinese Innovation"). At that level it's really unacceptable, pirating music and movies here and there, that's entertainment, it's not right but it's not seriously destructive to society.
Post reply on HN