With classy moves like this, I can't understand why we all hate on them so much...
Zynga May Have Just Laid Off 100+ Employees From Its Austin Office
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Re: Zynga May Have Just Laid Off 100+ Employees From Its Austin Office
#22Farmville was a great social game and their Words with Friends acquisition was very good... then they started making Farmville clones, blatantly ripping off competitor's games, and paid $200 million for Draw Something.
Even Mafia Wars on MySpace was a clone, I doubt they've ever had an original IP.
Re: Zynga May Have Just Laid Off 100+ Employees From Its Austin Office
#23Conceptually, I love every bit of bad Zynga news. I like to be reassured that a company will, in the long term, fail when its products are cynically designed to manipulate. That a company will fail when their strategy assumes it's okay to blatantly, consistently, continuously lift design from other firms and products.
Practically, though, bad Zynga news feels terrible. Because the guys who architected this repugnant exploitation machine already got paid. They made millions selling their stock before the market truly understood what a shit business they were running. Meanwhile, front-line employees sat with their plummeting stock locked up.
So any bad Zynga news is nothing more than notice that yet another group of hardworking folks is, somehow, getting fucked over, despite their leadership enjoying tremendous rewards.
Very frustrating to watch.
Re: Zynga May Have Just Laid Off 100+ Employees From Its Austin Office
#24Startups are hard.
Even big startups are hard. Zynga is startupy, even though they're public.
There's a lot of schadenfreude on HN when it comes to Zynga. Articles about Zynga's problems regularly make it to the top of HN.
Some people think games are frivolous. They're not. Entertainment is (almost) a basic human need. Some people think Zynga players are somehow being tricked. They're not. They're being entertained.
Some people say that Zynga steals ideas. Firstly, I'm guessing 99% of the people who say that are just repeating something they've heard. The other 1% should know that everyone steals from everyone. Unless you're the first guy to ever make a dynamic website, have usernames, top-bar navigation... you stole a lot of ideas too. And the ideas you stole are more fundamental than the plot of a game.
(also, if you know my history (i used to make fun of companies like this for a living) yes, i understand the irony of me writing such a supportive comment.)
Re: Zynga May Have Just Laid Off 100+ Employees From Its Austin Office
#25Also rumored to have shut down their Boston and Chicago offices.
Know some people out in Boston, checking to see if they are ok.
Re: Zynga May Have Just Laid Off 100+ Employees From Its Austin Office
#26Good to see Zynga starting to focus on profitability ...
Exactly. Zynga laid off employees from a failing division? What's the problem? Who cares when it happened. Those employees should have seen the writing on the wall.
Re: Zynga May Have Just Laid Off 100+ Employees From Its Austin Office
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Farmville was a blatant ripoff of Happy Farm - it just happened to be the first clone to hit the U.S. market from China and be successful.
Which was a ripoff of the classic mid-1990s SimFarm.
Not sure I would call SimFarm (SimAnt or SimIsle) classic.
SimTower on the other hand.
Re: Zynga May Have Just Laid Off 100+ Employees From Its Austin Office
#28I feel bad for all the Zynga people. Not for being so unceremoniously let go, but for the flood of recruiting emails they'll be receiving already. Good luck, people!
Re: Zynga May Have Just Laid Off 100+ Employees From Its Austin Office
#29During the Apple event, no less. Maybe I'm very cynical, but that seems like a deliberate attempt to bury the story.
Which is exactly the opposite of what will happen. People are talking about it more because they tried to bury it during the Apple event.
Re: Zynga May Have Just Laid Off 100+ Employees From Its Austin Office
#30Conceptually, I love every bit of bad Zynga news. I like to be reassured that a company will, in the long term, fail when its products are cynically designed to manipulate. That a company will fail when their strategy assumes it's okay to blatantly, consistently, continuously lift design from other firms and products. Practically, though, bad Zynga news feels terrible . Because the guys who architected this repugnant…
I guess you could argue that Zynga employees have been dancing with the devil for the past couple of years. Any Zynga employee I ever talked to was very open about how they aren't really making games. They are just cynically generating revenue over flaws in the human condition.
I think if you work for a screwy company like Zynga you should be very paranoid about cashing out of the company. If they have such a low opinion of their customers, who is to say they won't have the same sentiment towards their employees.