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Comment by joeblau | Hacker News Reader

Zynga should have sold it back for 300M-400M.

Or at least something. If I were a shareholder, I'd be irate. Maybe Zynga has some grand master plan for Draw Something and whatnot. But as of now, this looks like executives taking a massive, unnecessary loss in order to cover their own incompetence.

"These team members wanted whatever Zynga was willing to sell, even if that didn’t include the more valuable Draw Something assets or user data. Even more employees offered to work on OMGPOP.com for free. However, Zynga said this would all take too much legal work and wouldn’t agree to sell anything."

This is a huge red flag. To me that says there's something that would emerge during the due diligence process that Zynga does not want people to know about. If I was a gambler I'd short them hard in response to this, my hunch is that the firm is on its way to de-listing and collapse.

Do you think that it would be related to the reasons for shutting down OMGPOP operations? That is, they found some nasty skeletons in the closet, and the best way to hide them is to wind down everything OMGPOP-related so that they don't have to file reports about it and it doesn't ever get audited?

I couldn't say, and my comment above is honestly baseless speculation, just a very strong hunch. I haven't read any of their public filings on that acquisition so weight that appropriately.

> I was a gambler I'd short them hard in response to this

And you'd be pretty late to the party:) The short interest ratio on them is already .8. Thought its less than it was a couple of months ago.

Or it could just be you don't want to introduce more competition with already a solid brand and revenue, unless they are willing to pay.

This is a good point, and the most positive interpretation of Zynga's actions.

But I doubt one more competitor in the gaming industry would have a substantial impact on Zynga's long-term health. There are so many competitors already, many of whom create smash-out hits. Zynga does not anymore. OMGPOP's existence or non-existence won't change that.

agree completely but my point is two fold. first unless they were willing to pay the asking price, why would you do it. second you're better off having your opponents start as far back as possible unless they again make it worthwhile

Not if their strategy was to obliterate a potential competitor from the market.

If that was the idea, their execution was flawless.

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