Zynga slashes work force by a fifth, warns on bookings...
according to this article, Zynga has been struggling to retain players ...and because they can't, they are slashing their costs by letting 20% of their workforce go.
Such a crock, that.
Zynga has, for more than a year, been doing NOT ONE THING to retain players.
In fact, they have been basically kicking us in the arse and telling us not to let the door slam behind us on the way out.
In every game that I have every played of Zynga's, they persist in making the same errors over and over.
They have absolutely NO interest in listening to players or in understanding the reasons certain people play certain games and accommodating these various players.
And as of the last several months, they have trashed their one remaining strength area: customer service, adding it to the very long list of things that "we once did well but now can't be bothered."
People are NOT leaving Zynga's online games in favour of mobile games or multi-platform games the way Mr. Pincus would have the media and stockholders believe.
Mr. Pincus, apparently, also has no interest in actually paying attention to feedback from players.
We WANT to keep playing your games. A whole lot of us have invested a whole lot of time & money in our stupid farms or kitchens or frontiers or whatever... and we would like to keep right on playing.
But you've hired a whole bunch of developers that do not play the games and do not have respect for those who play the games they work on. And you've hired a whole bunch of managers, it seems, who also do not play the games and do not have respect for players. And hey, guess what? You've hired a bunch of customer service reps who do not play the games and do not have any respect for those who do...
surprise, surprise!! It doesn't work.
This, I believe, is the single biggest reason for Zynga's failure to thrive.
Used to be that the people that worked there played the games (and therefore, had respect for players).
Zynga got too big for their britches. They got rid of the people that loved the games, and replaced them with people that didn't even WANT to work for Zynga - they picked up a lot of their ~talent~ through takeovers and buyouts.... and they didn't bother to make sure that those people were adequately supervised, and they didn't bother to listen to any of their players any more cuz hey, if you don't have respect for us, why bother to listen?
Critical errors that all trace back to poor management, NOT to mobile/multi-platform games. Pincus should quit lying to himself and actually read some customer feedback once in awhile. And he should REALLY quit lying to the stockholders stuck with Zynga stock.
Although I really don't feel all THAT sorry for y'all, actually .... got to research and see what people who actually use the product are saying before you jump on those IPOs, guys!!! I could have told you it was a bad investment .... oh hey... I did, actually.
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