Zynga Shuts the Doors on Texas, New York Offices
posted Sunday Mar 3, 2013 by Nicholas DiMeo
While posting a small profit and having EA drop their copyright suit might be good news for Zynga, it appears to just be a bandage over a bigger problem. This week, Zynga announced it is shutting the doors on its Baltimore office. The company will also be shrinking its footprint in Texas and New York.
For their Baltimore branch, the closure will affect around 30 employees, or 1 percent of the developer studio. Further, this particular office was directly involved in the production of CityVille 2, which we know Zynga's COO David Ko canned after realizing the game was popular but not making them any money. Ko also mentioned in the announcement that Zynga did offer transfer opportunities to the affected employees, but only half of them decided to stay along for the ride.
Zynga will be closing the office in McKinney, Texas, as well as the office in downtown Austin, which will both be shifted to their sites in Dallas and North Austin. In New York, all of Zynga's offices will be shut down and the employees will be sent to the New York City mobile studio.
This is all a part of David Ko's no nonsense attitude when it comes to his attempt at making sure Zynga will stick around for longer than investors might be have predicted. From cutting the fat on non-profitable game titles to layoffs dating back to October, Ko is really putting the clamps down on the company. He did say in the blog post that the company intends to shut down the UK and Japan studios as well, however no date was given. On his plan to keep the company afloat, Ko said, "We still have a lot of work to do, but I'm confident that we're on the right path to deliver on the potential of Zynga."