Zynga Undergoes More Layoffs, Including Full Studio Closures in Three Cities - The UpStream

After COO David Ko took over the company and went through a period of serious consolidation and reduction, trouble still loomed for Zynga. More recently, Zynga lost its top spot as social gaming king and it would appear that things are getting worse as the months progress. Now, the gaming studio will undergo another round of staff terminations.

Zynga announced this week that it will be cutting almost another 20 percent of its total workforce, 520 people, as they will continue to cut costs everywhere they can to save the company as a whole. Zynga reps say that this measure will save yet another $80 million a year from their bottom line. In total, this will bring the total work force that's left down to about 2,300, which is even less than when they began their IPO in December of 2011, at nearly 2,700 employees. Even worse, the stock price dropped another 12 percent this week to $3 a share, bringing it to 70 percent below what the IPO was initially at.

CEO Mark Pincus said in a blog post that,

The scale that served us so well in building and delivering the leading social gaming service on the Web is now making it hard to successfully lead across mobile and multiplatform, which is where social games are going to be played.

The layoffs will include employees who are both new and seniors in the company, and will affect the San Francisco studio. Moreover, the New York, LA and Dallas offices will be shutting down for good, which obviously means the reductions in those cities did not work out in the long run.

Naturally, employees have been very upset about this news and took to the web to post their frustrations. Senior designer Matthew Cox spoke on the layoffs, mentioning that 55 employees, the whole office, was the casualty in the LA studio, however the severance was "very generous." We hope that the talented individuals from the company land on their feet and find a more prosperous work environment soon.