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Zynga Shuts Down OMGPOP One Year After Acquiring It For $200M

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Re: Zynga Shuts Down OMGPOP One Year After Acquiring It For $200M

#41

Post by samstave »

pavs wrote: post #12

I want to know what kind of thought process goes on company/individual's mind when they decide to do an acquisition like this, for $200M, which doesn't make enough money to justify it. You would think when you are throwing around that kind of money, they would do some rudimentary research? How much money was omgpop making at the time of the acquisition?

The thought process was something like this:

MP: "FUCK! OMGPOP's drawsomething is the number one game! COPY IT!"

varucasalt.jpg

Legal: "Mark, uh - I don't think we can copy that one"

MP: "WHY?! - We've done it with everything else!"

Legal: "Yeah - but this one's too big, too successful. If we copy the number one game, it would be too obvious."

MP: "How much to buy it? I WANT IT!"

/stamps foot

---

I picture an internal battle around wanting to copy it and realizing that there was no way to copy them without a PR nightmare - so they opted to purchase them for an insane amount... even though that amount was not reflective of their ability to maintain or succeed with future releases.

Re: Zynga Shuts Down OMGPOP One Year After Acquiring It For $200M

#42

Post by tlb »

raheemm wrote: post #26
der3k wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Start your own company then and set an example instead of criticizing others. Edit: Thanks for all the upvotes/support. To those who see this as legitimate criticism, really? The OP elaborated on nothing - no constructive criticisms were made. Instead, it just sounds like pure anger and naïveté on my end, alluding to all entrepreneurs trying to make it/who have made it as "leeches" and "near-sighted execs" that have…

If failure of such magnitude cannot be criticized, then what should be?

Not even trying.

Edit: no, that's too mean. But I like people who take risks, and I get defensive when people snicker at failure from their armchairs of hindsight. We should learn from failures, but not rush to say, "he failed, what an idiot!"

Re: Zynga Shuts Down OMGPOP One Year After Acquiring It For $200M

#43

Post by petercooper »

crimsonzagar wrote: post #3

Is there anywhere a list of investors who called Zynga a "big deal" two-three years earlier?

We could just look at the investors who put significant sums in. Crunchbase has a list: http://www.crunchbase.com/company/zynga

To be fair to them all, it reads like a who's who of the VC world from Brad Feld and Reid Hoffman through to Andreessen Horowitz, Softbank, and Union Square Ventures. I'm not sure any blame could be laid at their doors though, it was an exciting and high growth company and that's exactly what they tend to invest in (and what gets celebrated the most around here on HN.. growth > profits, a "startup" isn't really a startup unless it's growing fast and all that, etc.)

Re: Zynga Shuts Down OMGPOP One Year After Acquiring It For $200M

#44

Post by chaz »

yesplorer wrote: post #8

I was surprised to hear 3000 people were making those Zynga games. Doing what exactly? Pls I'm genuinely curious. These social games seems so lame to me that I can't think of any reason why someone will even think of building a public company on top of it. You simply cannot meet investors' quarterly demand when your success is built on being "flavour of the month" business model. I don't have anything wrong against Z…

They have a few dozen games of varying popularity. The bigger ones need a non-stop flow of new content to be created. Zynga was very good at creating new tasks and items constantly, so there was always something to do and something new to collect. It requires new story lines, artwork, mechanics, localization, and support. Many of the games don't overlap, so each game needs much of its own team.

> You simply cannot meet investors' quarterly demand when your success is built on being "flavour of the month" business model

Sure you can -- just look at any company that's in the entertainment business. All of their products, from pop songs to to supermodels to blockbuster movies, have a limited shelf life and require hit after hit after hit in order to sustain the business. They stay ahead of the curve by casting a wide net, having a team that is good at selecting the hits, effectively bringing the product to maturity (like producing an album or movie), and marketing the crap out of it.

Zynga may have made many mistakes along the way and probably got too large to quickly. But they not the first nor last company that got a couple of major hits and were backed to produce more based on that record. Do it well, and you have Pixar. Do it poorly, and you join the massive pile of overhyped one-hit wonders.

Re: Zynga Shuts Down OMGPOP One Year After Acquiring It For $200M

#46

Post by Ixiaus »

ianstallings wrote: post #14

I bet all the execs got well paid for their terrible efforts though and they will slide into new positions of power regardless of their merit. We need to take our industry back from the leeches. The near-sighted execs with nothing but paper accolades and networks of cronies.

There isn't anything to "take back" - other than Government sponsored monopolies or price ceilings/floors, the market is OPEN to you! There are many competent people building amazing companies, incompetent people getting paid well, competent people getting paid badly, competent people making lots of money and being fair with their employees. This (corporate) world is less black and white than you're making it out to be.

Realizing someone is performing or behaving poorly isn't a bad thing at all (it's how we learn!) but sitting on HN declaring that the nebulous "we" needs to "take back" our industry from leeches is absolutely ridiculous. Like the other commenter said, go build your own company! If you truly are more competent, fair, and mindful as a leader THOSE TYPES will flock to you.

It's what I'm doing. It's what many entrepreneurs I know are doing.

Re: Zynga Shuts Down OMGPOP One Year After Acquiring It For $200M

#47

Post by sdoowpilihp »

jerhinesmith wrote: post #7
pyre wrote: post #5

| "but most of my team had new jobs lined up | by the time they left the building anyway." I've never experienced this. Does this mean that they were already looking, or that they were able to immediately call someone up and get a job offer on-demand? Edit: To be clear, having 'a job lined up' to me means that they already at least have an offer, rather than just a bunch of emails from recruiters and/or people lookin…

If it's anything like San Francisco, once word spreads that a gaming company is shuttering, there's pretty much a "land grab" from the other local companies for talent.

Especially at a company like Zynga, that at least as far as I know, had a fairly rigorous interview process. It's a chance to get a pre-screened engineer, possibly on the cheap.

Re: Zynga Shuts Down OMGPOP One Year After Acquiring It For $200M

#48

Post by mnglkhn2 »

mherdeg wrote: post #22
Fuzzwah wrote: post #4

Could be good to hear from Dan Porter again. http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/167244/Turning_down_Zynga...

I didn't understand your reference. Is the story here that (1) Shay Pierce wrote a column for Gamasutra about why he decided not to work for Zynga after they acquired OMGPOP? And then (I had to dig in the comments) (2) as that column was circulating, OMGPOP CEO Dan Porter supposedly sent the Twitter message "What's so interesting about success is the number of failures who try to ride on your back. Shay Pierce is jus…

It would be interesting to see if Dan Porter still considers OMGPOP a success under Zynga?! That flippant tweet should have not happened, considering that the sale was pretty much a very successful exit for Dan Porter but not necessarily a great success for any of the OMGPOP people.

Re: Zynga Shuts Down OMGPOP One Year After Acquiring It For $200M

#49

Post by Ixiaus »

raheemm wrote: post #26
der3k wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Start your own company then and set an example instead of criticizing others. Edit: Thanks for all the upvotes/support. To those who see this as legitimate criticism, really? The OP elaborated on nothing - no constructive criticisms were made. Instead, it just sounds like pure anger and naïveté on my end, alluding to all entrepreneurs trying to make it/who have made it as "leeches" and "near-sighted execs" that have…

If failure of such magnitude cannot be criticized, then what should be?

Criticizing it is totally okay. What the OP said though was much more than "constructive analytical criticism" - there was a lot of emotion and ambiguous assumptions built into his statement that make very little sense.

Re: Zynga Shuts Down OMGPOP One Year After Acquiring It For $200M

#50

Post by crimsonzagar »

mseebach wrote: post #30
crimsonzagar wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Criticism is extremely important for any cos. and its executives. Criticism can potentially save any Zynga from sliding away to nothingness ...

It very charitable to call the GP's rant "criticism".

That's correct. Which makes me wonder if rant = criticism + emotion? If yes, then he/she who rants does make good for an entrepreneur but only if that quality gets toned and put into action.

I believe there would exist some analysis/research around this already. For there does seem some evidence of great companies been built by people who were hurt, emotional or egoistic about their shit.

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