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A comment on Mark Pincus Steps Down From All Operational Roles at Zynga. Parent comment

Re:Mark Pincus Steps Down From All Operational Roles at Zynga by pfraze on Wednesday April 23, 2014 @05:31PM (#7637040)
There's maybe some truth to what you're claiming, but I think you're describing something overly-nefarious. Startups are inherently risky for their investors. They're going to try to market themselves well to cover up that risk. That seems like the entirety of it.

People played the heck out of Farmville, and I'm certain Zynga has had other successes. It's not like they don't produce some value.

EDIT: I guess to elaborate, what I need to hear from you is evidence of deception before I can accept your claim.

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Re:Mark Pincus Steps Down From All Operational Roles at Zynga by josho on Wednesday April 23, 2014 @06:04PM (#7637225)
Zynga showed very little ability to reproduce their success in Farmville. Meanwhile Facebook had changed their policies making Zynga's viral growth more difficult to obtain for their next games, and they hadn't proven any success in mobile. So, for those that understood the market Zynga hadn't proven a sustainable business model. However, the Wall Street drumbeat was quite a different story.

In my opinion Zynga didn't need the cash that the IPO offered to re-invest in their business, it was simply a vehicle to cash out investors.

So, evidence of deception? All I can provide is that as a solid investment opportunity Zynga was anything but, as a well sold story that wall street spun, perhaps so.

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Re:Mark Pincus Steps Down From All Operational Roles at Zynga by stratagerm on Thursday April 24, 2014 @07:02AM (#7639358)
> Meanwhile Facebook had changed their policies making Zynga's viral growth more difficult to obtain for their next games

Don't forget that this viral growth was achieved through unethical methods. [1] In the fall of 2009 a number of articles appeared calling out the unethical behavior which changed the climate and forced Facebook to alter its policy:

  Scamville: The Social Gaming Ecosystem Of Hell [2]
  Scamville: Zynga Says 1/3 Of Revenue Comes From Lead Gen And Other Offers [3]
  Zynga CEO Mark Pincus: "I Did Every Horrible Thing In The Book Just To Get Revenues" [4]
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zynga#Scam_ads

[2] http://techcrunch.com/2009/10/31/scamville-the-social-gaming...

[3] http://techcrunch.com/2009/11/02/scamville-zynga-says-13-of-...

[4] http://techcrunch.com/2009/11/06/zynga-scamville-mark-pinkus...

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Re:Mark Pincus Steps Down From All Operational Roles at Zynga by pfraze on Wednesday April 23, 2014 @07:25PM (#7637581)
That's a pretty fair view in my mind. Games companies are always troubled by sustainability, so I don't think Zynga's problems are unique - and that's a problem. Their stock would've only been worth buying if they had cracked sustainability, and their early success seemed a bit dressed up to act like they had.
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