UPDATED 11:00 EDT / AUGUST 06 2013

NEWS

Zynga Shuts Down OMGPOP for Good

Zynga has announced its intention to shut down OMGPOP Inc., the maker of “Draw Something”, which it acquired in March of last year, on September 30, 2013.

According to Zynga’s post announcing the news, it’s shutting down OMGPOP to “make way for new and exciting gaming opportunities.”  Though OMGPOP will be shut down, popular games such as Draw Something, Draw Something 2 and Draw My Thing will not be affected, so players can still enjoy the games even after the shutdown.

However, before the site’s demise on September, certain, less-than-popular games such as Cupcake Corner, Gem Rush,Pool World Champ and Snoops will be killed on August 29, 2013.  Zynga encourages players of these games to check out other Zynga games that they might enjoy instead.

So why did Zynga think it was time to kill off OMGPOP?  According to reports, the four games being killed off have less than 50,000 monthly active users which simply means that it’s not making enough money for Zynga.

It’s not that much of a surprise that Zynga finally put an end to OMGPOP, since its office in New York was closed down back in June, with its employees being terminated.  Those developments mean that OMGPOP was being operated by Zynga’s own staff, in Zynga’s office, and when business didn’t improve, they just decided to put it out of its misery.

But OMGPOP didn’t go down without a fight.  According to sources close to Zynga, OMGPOP wanted to buy back the company or else be allowed to continue operating the site, however Zynga refused.  You’d think that Zynga would jump on the opportunity to make some cash from a company that it says is not earning them enough dough, so why did Zynga refuse OMGPOP’s offer to buy back?

TechCrunch’s Josh Constine stated that Zynga may have rejected OMGPOP’s effort out of fear – fear of the company being able to come back and perform better than when it was with Zynga.  If that happened, it would have been very embarrassing for Zynga.  So instead of giving OMGPOP a lifeline, Zynga committed an act of euthanasia.

It seems like Don Mattrick, Zynga’s new CEO, may be having a hard time transitioning from being the former president of Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment unit, which is responsible for the Xbox and all of the company’s gaming and entertaining efforts, to a person in charge of social and mobile games.  Mattrick may be focusing too much on making Zynga profitable that he is failing to see how companies such as OMGPOP could contribute to its success if given a second chance. 


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