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Draw Something Loses 5 Million Users a Month After Zynga Purchase

forbes.com

31–40 of 71 posts

Re: Draw Something Loses 5 Million Users a Month After Zynga Purchase

#32

To be fair, people get bored of mobile apps, in general, pretty easily. I remember playing Draw Something constantly for a few weeks then I eventually stopped playing because it got old pretty fast. I don't think Zynga is the reason why this is happening.

Nothing in the title or article implies that the Zynga acquisition caused the decline.

The article did say that Zynga added "Draw Ads" like Pepsi and Doritos, which, if it's done in Zynga's typical ham-handed fashion, could be a big turn-off.

Re: Draw Something Loses 5 Million Users a Month After Zynga Purchase

#35
post #11
post #5

A friend who really loved the game tried to show it to me, but it kept having server problems. I wonder if that was just an isolated case or if it was frequent, in which case it could drive off users.

My girl and I stopped playing because of that. It went from playable to unplayable literally within a week or two. It would lose our moves (returning to "Your move" when you'd submitted something hours before). It would give strange errors "You're using this on more than once device"... erm, no I'm not. And once it forgot who I was and showed no active games once I logged in again... effectively losing the games I wa…

One horrendous bug me and my friends came across with infuriating frequency was that the game would randomly change the word with another one of the same length when asking you to guess it. Effectively making it impossible to win unless you went through every possible word in the dictionary.

Needless to say I don't play any more.

Re: Draw Something Loses 5 Million Users a Month After Zynga Purchase

#36
Zynga completely abused the product. I started getting requests to give them more rights on facebook, which I solved my signing in with my email - then they started to send me push messages about weird things - I've heard they even asked for read/write sms rights on Android devices. I can only see it one way - Zynga might make cool games, but they are hardcore abusing regular people - also non-techinal people unlike us, that does not realize the outcome of granting these priveledges.

Re: Draw Something Loses 5 Million Users a Month After Zynga Purchase

#38

Soon after the Zynga acquisition I opened the app and it asked me for a new/additional Facebook permission to have access to post on my wall, with no easy way to play my friends anymore if I said no. Could have something to do with it.

Makes me glad I didn't link it to my facebook at all.

Re: Draw Something Loses 5 Million Users a Month After Zynga Purchase

#39

"Whatever happens with the game now, they’ve made out like bandits." Am I the only one who thought 'and jolly good luck to them'?

That was my first thought, too; they've got a princely sum out of "the man", by creating a popular product through (no doubt) a lot of hard work, and without (it seems) wilfully screwing anyone over. Good for them!

Re: Draw Something Loses 5 Million Users a Month After Zynga Purchase

#40

"Halo 3 looses 5 Million Users 1 Month After Release" ... well of course it did, because most games get old pretty quickly. To understand if Zynga overpaid, you'd need to know if they bought OMGPOP for a single hit title, or if they see them as a creative group with many hits to come, like Blizzard or Valve.

Halo is an incredibly powerful brand in it's own right, with lore and characters that can be exploited in multiple markets. I don't think it's a fair comparison.
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