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Comment by dakrisht | Hacker News Reader

Still can't figure out, month after month, how this lousy company is still in business. Some truly mind-blowing stuff here. Zynga folding is now expected. Mattrick will be gone in < 90 days and then the ship will finish it's descent into deep waters. Unfortunate for the employees who have been (and are being) laid off. But this company has always been a model for failure. Ripping off and blatantly copying games to monetize briefly using FB's platform and then leveraging the temporary growth into huge VC investments to quickly cash out and disappear is the epitome of scum leadership and vision.

This company has always been and always will be a pure scam. Period.

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Zynga is one of the worst company's for ripping off other people. If ever there was a company whose grave I wanted to dance on, then Zynga would be it.

Might be worth throwing a party in SF, when they finally go out of business.

On the other hand, a lot of people have already cashed out and made bank on the scumminess, so who knows.

I'm the last guy to be harsh on people, but if you joined Zynga and you had a choice to go somewhere else, it's kinda your own fault. Personally, I have some standards a company needs to live up to for me to want to work there... Not saying I'm a "rock-star" and can choose wherever I want to work, far from it, but I still wouldn't take a job at Zynga unless I was long term unemployed.

The people I really feel bad for are the ones who worked at other companies which were taken over by Zynga.

The ones I feel bad for are the incidental employees: the people working at the front desks, the secretaries, some of the HR people.. all of those people for whom Zynga is just another relatively unremarkable company. They don't have a part in the unpleasant aspects of the company, and could hardly be expected to evaluate the company before deciding to work there. If they start losing their jobs, they will be the only employees there I feel bad for.

Nobody starved while working at Zynga. The people for whom i feel bad are the homeless.

At least they live in a place not ravaged by war. I feel bad for the people stuck in war zones.

At what point do we stop with the one-upmanship and accept that we can feel bad for people on various levels?

Then freaking sell your computer and all other first world stuff and help them if that really worries you that much.

ugh.

The niche is growing and will continue to grow into the foreseeable future. So making a good profit is possible.

However the competition is heating up quickly to nuclear fusion temperatures. Every useful app or silly game on every smart phone is effectively a direct competitor -- Zynga needs people obsessing on very certain games for hundreds of hours, enough time to punch in real dollars on the whim.

Furthermore, this is an inherently unsticky kind of niche. Every customer will need to be won over again in 12 months or less, as they tire of that one charming game.

The stock is going to crater...

Furthermore, this is an inherently unsticky kind of niche. Every customer will need to be won over again in 12 months or less, as they tire of that one charming game.

Full agree with this statement. If you look at titles like Candy Crush, sure, they're doing amazing right now, pulling in huge numbers (users and revenue) - but in 3-6 months - they won't be around. Retention will switch over to the next 45th copy of Bejeweled.

It's actually a very interesting model. The same games are re-created by new "startup" companies every few months. 1/100 hits and becomes a Top-10 item in the app store. The game gets huge traction by leveraging FB's massive user base, company puts together obscene numbers showing engagement, in-app purchases, growth projections (which end up diving after a few Q's) and then go out and raise Series-A rounds.

What I CAN'T figure out is - are VCs really this dumb to invest in companies that won't be around in 12-18 months? Maybe they're not, maybe it's the VC model that's flawed. Invest in 100 companies @ $1.5-3M per and 1 will go public or get acquired and we'll make our money back. But this is an entirely different conversation.

It's like watching fireworks and thinking "ooh I really think that purple one is different!".

This is how most VC's and kids calling themselves "entrepreneurs" these days see the world.

If I have to hear one more idiot with an app or another 56th version of a similar service like Instagram say they're "changing the world" I might lose it. Ha!

Candy Crush may be a bad example... King has been around for 10 years, so not really a startup. They're somewhat similar to Rovio in having a late hit.

It depends what they do with the success that determines their future, I'm pretty sure they're aware that Candy Crush is a fad, just a matter of exploiting it while working on the next thing.

I'll give it up to Rovio.

They had an original idea, a great product, they kept releasing new additions to the product. They built a large business around it. They branded the product, they created merchandise, they never scummed their employees and took their early equity.

They're a good company.

Don't you think Angry Birds was rather "inspired" by Crush the Castle[1]?

They did well milking the idea for every penny, and I think they were a key driver of the casual gaming genre (along with Zynga and their Facebook gaming) but I think they were pretty lucky with a few key celebrity endorsements.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crush_the_Castle

Certainly a good part of the mechanic of Crush the Castle there, but the main differences are:

1) Aiming where the projectiles go is easy 2) Most projectiles use "powerups"

Which to me, make the games as different as say, Mario and Sonic.

They are also using Box2D but will only admit if you ask question face to face in public. And that phys lib is the crux of their gameplay.

Never played Crush the Castle. And now that I looked it up, well, there goes the originality of their IP. Unreal.

Zynga's remaining value was $1b in yearly revenue. Q2'13 they lost 45% of that dau in 12 months, which means revenues just halved.

Mattrick is now a Nasdaq CEO. Totally worth it to him.

We're looking at no more than four shrinking quarters after which Zynga will fold or transform through some transaction. Pincus gets to say it wasn't his fault.

I don't think you understand Zynga's financials very well.

They're sitting on $1.25 billion in cash. They could lose $50 million per quarter for 5 years and still just keep chugging along.

They're not short on problems, but they will not be folding for a very long time, and Mattrick will not be gone in less than 90 days.

I'm not saying they're insolvent.

Zynga's Free cash flow was ($14) million for the second quarter of 2013 compared to ($204) million for the second quarter of 2012.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/zynga-reports-second-quarter-2...

Things crumble fast on Wall Street.

Isn't it the goal of every startup praised here on HN? Provide no real value, aquire users as quick as possoble, sell out, take the money and let the buyer to shut down the project.

I guess they are still sitting on cash reserves.

There is a profitable business in Zynga, as much as some people hate that. They need to downsize and make more targeted bets.

Cash runs out, especially with their overhead. Sure, the downsizing helped, but there's no reason they need that kind of staffing. VC's will push for huge hires in the beginning. But the company has been taking for well over a year. The IPO was a scam, Pincus raped the price and stole $200M. The SEC should investigate him 100%

They need a good product. They don't have one. They probably won't have one since their entire company revolves around copying former titles (like the Sim games). I wonder what happened with the EA assault on Zynga?

They counter-sued each other and settled out of court. The terms are secret, but Zynga phased out The Ville.

EA and Zynga Settle The Ville -The Sims: Social Lawsuits: http://gamepolitics.com/2013/02/15/ea-and-zynga-settle-ville...

Breaking: EA and Zynga reach settlement in lawsuit surrounding The Ville: http://www.insidesocialgames.com/2013/02/15/breaking-ea-and-...

No, EA, you are not “standing up for the industry” by suing Zynga: http://www.insidesocialgames.com/2012/08/24/no-ea-you-are-no...

The Ville was obviously a graphical and mechanical rip-off of The Sims, with a thick helping of Zynga Sauce slathered on top.

Having worked on the original version of The Sims, and knowing a bunch of former Sims designers and developers who now or recently worked at Zynga, I thought that The Sims Social was itself, modulo the original Sims stuff at its core, an almost literal rip-off of the cliché "social game" mechanics that are the signature of Zynga's game, but that was EA's sweet and fitting revenge for Zynga ripping off theirs and everybody else's games. (But no, EA wasn't "standing up for the game industry", it was just a bully bullying back at another bully.)

So Zynga copied The Sims and added their own "stuff" on top, then they got mad when EA copied Zynga's own stuff back on top of The Sims to make it into a "social game". Tough shit, assholes! Really sucks when somebody does the same thing back to you that you did to them, doesn't it, huh? The judge must have had a big laugh at both their expenses.

I suppose it's a good thing that they settled out of court, so they didn't established any legal precedents that you can't copy generic game elements.

So if all The Sims Social was meant to do was to screw over Zynga the same way Zynga had been screwing over other companies, then it was a spectacular success, and a brilliant piece of performance art, and parroting all those clichéd design decisions was justified! But was that the best direction to take the Sims franchise in as a game...? Well that's a different question! ;)

The shitty thing is that all of Pincus's sins will be forgotten the next time he starts a company because in Silicon Valley a man's worth is measured by his bank account.

Sigh, I would agree with you except this is kind of the third time he's done this...

Support.com, massive lawsuit for "computer checkup ads"

Tribe.net, The community that owns the "island of lost toys". Basically a relatively successful social network that went belly up for a number of reasons

and

Zynga, the red-headed stepchild of the Facebook platform.

So, IMHO, no one will remember Zynga the next time Pincus has a startup, just like no one remembers tribe or support.com.

Ain't that the truth. Some believe in karma, maybe he doesn't.

This will change. Look at Kleiner - investment after investment = flop after flop. Cleantech. Ouya. What's next?

Institutional money, pension funds, high-net worth individuals, sovereign wealth funds, etc. will all start realizing and cracking down on these idiotic investments left and right. It's like the eyeballs craze of the 90s. Have a site? 100,000 eyeballs a month? Shit, you're a $500M company. You'll make money somehow in the future, we believe in you.

Yeah, we remember what happened then.

It'll get worse. The JOBS Act will allow even more individual investors to get duped by guys like him by crowdfunding his next big "idea".

They won't be forgotten by any employees he promises equity to.

the funny ironic thing is that his scamming prowess is something that makes him a good investment for many VCS. once ahner asked me (because I had made some moral corporate standard statements) whether I would as avc invest in a hypothetical next startup by asshole Steve Jobs. not entirely sure if I could resist that one but I'd never invest in Pincus's next startup out go work for it.

Could anyone give a brief summary of why the IPO was a scam and what exactly Pincus did?

Pincus being a self-proclaimed scammer: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/96024-Zynga-CEO-Ad...

Little on the IPO here: http://www.businessinsider.com/zynga-stock-price-valuation-2...

Does anyone have any insight as to what will likely happen to Zynga's mobile apps if their business closes down?

Sold (along with the relevant brands) to EA. Coincidentally, Mattrick is a former 15 year high level executive at EA.

*its descent

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