From The New York Times’s piece, Zynga’s culture risks a talent drain.
“In July, Zynga lost a bid for PopCap, a mobile game company. Zynga offered $950 million in cash.
But PopCap’s founders worried about the company’s reputation after hearing rumors of the company’s rescinding share awards and fierce internal competition, said two people with first-hand knowledge of the situation. Instead, PopCap agreed to a rival offer from Electronic Arts, worth $750 million in cash and stock and the potential of an additional $550 million if certain earnings goals were met.
Several start-ups have also rebuffed Zynga this year, including Rovio. This summer, Rovio, the maker of the popular mobile game Angry Birds, walked away from discussions of a deal worth roughly $2.25 billion in cash and stock, three people briefed on the situation said.”
So why does no one want to do business with Zynga? They have a strong following. Could it be because they are so heavily entrenched with Facebook?
@Crystal C: the second paragraph in the article explains why… the company appears to be a rough and tumble place where borderline business practices are followed.
Sounds like a bigtime culture problem. Who wants to be acquired by a company with a culture that sucks? Even if the founders don’t intend to hang around long, why do that to your employees?
@Crystal: Here’s a pretty good overview of why Zynga is a terrible company, both to its employees and its users:
http://dubiousquality.blogspot.com/2010/10/pincus-finkus.html
The Wikipedia entry for the company (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zynga) also has quite a long list of controversies they’ve been involved in. Also note the list of subsidiary studios they’ve acquired — each studio seems to lose their original identity and simply becomes another cog in the Zynga machine for churning out deceptive addictive crap.
So it’s not surprising that PopCap and Rovio — both well-established studios that are known for taking pride in the quality of their work — weren’t willing to sell themselves out to Zynga for a quick buck and a stake in Zynga’s doomed-to-collapse empire.