founded april 2007 2007 04 1 nb 1 headquarters san francisco california u.s. area served worldwide founder s mark pincus justin waldron eric schiermeyer michael luxton steve schoettler 2 key people mark pincus co founder and former ceo frank gibeau ceo industry interactive entertainment social network service revenue us 764 million 2015 3 operating income us 146.056 million 2015 3 net income us 121.510 million 2015 3 total assets us 2.124 billion 2015 3 total equity us 1.786 billion 2015 3 employees 1 669 dec 2015 3 website zynga.com alexa rank 2 923 august 31 2014 update 4 registration yes users 240 million monthly active users 20 million daily active users 5 not in citation given current status active zynga z is an american provider of social video game services founded in july 2007 and headquartered in san francisco california united states . 1 the company develops social games that work stand alone on mobile phone platforms such as apple ios android windows phone and on the internet through its website zynga.com and social networking websites such as facebook google and tencent qq . 6 zynga states its mission as connecting the world through games . 7 the company was named in honor of zinga ceo mark pincus s deceased american bulldog . 8 zynga launched its best known game farmville on facebook in june 2009 9 reaching 10 million daily active users dau within six weeks . 10 as of early january 2013 zynga games had over 265 million monthly active users mau 5 and three of the top five facebook games in terms of mau according to appdata were zynga titles farmville 2 texas holdem poker now known as zynga poker and chefville . 11 according to the bbc around 80 percent of zynga s revenue comes from facebook users but its formal partnership with facebook ended on march 31 2013 . 12 zynga began trading on nasdaq december 16 2011 13 under the ticker znga . originally priced at 10 znga shares reached a price of 14.50 in march 2012 but fell steadily after that point hitting 2.09 in 2012 . 14 15 16 some analysts and journalists have questioned the long term prospects of zynga s business model especially after zynga s q2 2012 earnings report failed to meet analyst projections for revenue and earnings . zynga has been taking steps to cut expenses and expand its business into areas such as licensed board games online gambling its own gaming platform zynga.com and mobile game apps . 17 18 19 20 contents 1 history 1.1 acquisitions 2 revenue 3 business model 3.1 hasbro partnership 3.2 real money gaming 3.3 customer acquisition 3.4 platinum purchase program 3.5 viability 3.6 scam ads 4 corporate culture 5 relationship with facebook 6 studios and subsidiaries 6.1 current 6.2 former 7 reception and controversies 7.1 game quality 7.2 spam concerns 7.3 intellectual property controversies and litigation 7.4 insider trading allegations 7.5 other legal controversies 8 funding 8.1 public offering 9 games 9.1 current games 9.2 discontinued games 10 board games 11 zynga.org 12 see also 13 notes 14 references 15 external links history edit mark pincus 21 eric schiermeyer justin waldron michael luxton steve schoettler and andrew trader 2 co founded zynga in april 2007 under the name presidio media ; the company name changed to zynga in july 2007 . 1 zynga was named after an american bulldog named zinga once owned by mark pincus . 8 22 the company uses an image of a bulldog as its logo . zynga s first game texas hold em poker now known as zynga poker was released on facebook in july 2007 . the company received us 10 million led by venture capital firm union square ventures in its first round of funding in january 2008 . 23 in july of the same year zynga received us 29 million in venture finance from several firms led by kleiner perkins caufield & byers in july 2008 at which time they appointed former electronic arts chief creative officer bing gordon to the board . 24 during the same period they also bought yoville a large virtual world social network game . 24 zynga became the facebook app developer with the most monthly active users in april 2009 with 40 million people playing their games that month . 25 soon after the company opened its first external game studio in baltimore zynga east led by brian reynolds . 26 in june of the same year zynga acquired myminilife which then built and launched farmville on facebook and by august it was the first game on facebook to reach 10 million daily active users . 27 it had 20 million daily active users by october . on november 23 2009 farmville.com went live as zynga s first stand alone game . on may 7 2010 techcrunch s michael arrington reported that zynga was threatening to leave facebook altogether in the wake of the website s requiring exclusive use of facebook credits for monetization in applications . 28 on may 18 2010 facebook and zynga entered into a five year relationship to expand the use of facebook credits in zynga s games . 29 in december 2010 zynga s game cityville surpassed farmville as its most popular game 30 with over 61 million monthly active users and a base of over 16 million daily active users . 31 zynga filed with the u.s. securities and exchange commission sec to raise up to 1 billion in an initial public offering on july 1 2011 . at the time the company had 2 000 employees . 32 zynga began trading on nasdaq on december 16 2011 . on june 26 2012 during the annual zynga unleashed conference zynga announced the zynga with friends network aiming to connect players of zynga game titles across multiple platforms . 33 zynga also announced the zynga api intended to help developers build social games . 34 the company announced that three new partners were developing games for zynga.com including 50 cubes majesco entertainment and portalarium and unveiled the zynga partners for mobile program to help increase zynga s presence on mobile devices . 35 on october 14 2012 zynga filed a lawsuit against a former general manager for allegedly misappropriating trade secrets . the suit claims the ex employee copied important confidential information from his computer before leaving zynga to work for a rival social games maker . 36 on july 1 2013 zynga confirmed that it had hired microsoft s interactive entertainment president don mattrick as its new ceo . zynga s press release announced that former ceo mark pincus would continue as zynga s chairman and chief product officer . 37 according to zynga s 8 k regulatory filing mattrick would receive about 50 million in cash and stock compensation over several years . 38 in 2013 zynga began shutting down some of its games . 39 on june 3 2013 zynga announced that the company would be laying off 520 employees roughly 18 percent of its workforce and close offices in new york los angeles and dallas . 40 41 by july 2013 zynga has reportedly lost nearly half of its user base from the previous year . consequently investors decreased zynga s valuation by 400 million . 42 on july 25 2013 zynga reported during their q2 earnings that they would not be pursuing real money game production in the us . following this announcement shares dropped 13 % . 43 the same month the three top zynga executives had left the company john osvald a senior vice president of games jesse janosov a vice president who ran zynga s casino division and nathan etter a vice president of games all resigned . 44 in january 2014 the company announced plans to reduce its workforce by 15 % bringing its total number of employees down by 314 . 45 in april 2014 as part of the company s regular quarterly earnings report founder & former ceo pincus announced he would be stepping down from day to day operations in his role as chief product officer retaining his position as chairman of the board . daily active users fell from 53 million to 28 million year over year for the same period . 46 the company also announced its new hire of alex garden co founder of relic entertainment and former microsoft game studios executive . 47 in july 2014 zynga announced they had leased office space and were hiring software engineers and technical designers for a new outfit in orlando . 48 zynga headquarters in san francisco in 2016 in february 2016 zynga said that it planned to sell its headquarters in san francisco a property last assessed at over 238 million . 49 acquisitions edit in february 2010 zynga acquired serious business a social game company . 50 zynga also in february opened a studio in los angeles california as well as zynga india in bangalore the company s first office outside the united states . 51 in may 2010 zynga acquired xpd media . weeks later on june 3 2010 zynga acquired challenge games which would later be known as zynga austin . 52 on june 9 2010 zynga launched frontierville developed at its zynga east studio in baltimore . 53 54 zynga acquired conduit labs on august 17 2010 renaming it zynga boston . the acquisition of dextrose now zynga germany marked the company s first expansion into europe . bonfire studios was acquired by zynga on october 5 2010 . it was renamed zynga dallas . the acquisition brought zynga s workforce to more than 1300 employees worldwide . months later on december 2 2010 zynga announced it acquired the texas based mobile game developer newtoy inc. developers of words with friends and chess with friends 55 and renamed the studio to zynga with friends . 56 zynga acquired the new york based game developer area code now renamed zynga new york in january 2011 . soon after in march 2011 zynga announced the acquisition of the team from boston based game developer floodgate entertainment . it was zynga s tenth acquisition in ten months . 57 in april 2011 zynga announced the acquisition of marketzero an online poker tracker company . 58 on march 21 2012 zynga announced their purchase of the game company omgpop for 180 million 59 therein acquiring the popular game draw something . 60 a noticeable drop in popularity was noted following the acquisition as daily active users dropped from 15 million to 10 million in the first month post acquisition . 61 on june 4 2012 zynga announced the purchase of video game maker buzz monkey along with their entire 50 person oregon based office which will now turn into zynga s 18th satellite office . buzz monkey is known for working on successful video games such as tomb raider and tony hawk as well as zynga s frontierville . 62 on september 17 2012 zynga announced it had acquired game maker a bit lucky for an undisclosed amount . 63 on november 9 2012 zynga announced it had acquired game company november software for an undisclosed amount . zynga revealed that the acquisition actually happened back in the spring and that it will be working on bringing console gaming experiences to mobile . the rumored title of the game is battlestone . 64 on june 19 2013 zynga bought spooky cool labs a 40 person social games company led by brian eddy . the company has achieved successes with its wizard of oz city building game and more recently with hit it rich slots . unlike many of zynga s other acquisitions spooky cool will continue to operate independently under the same leadership that it had up until the purchase . 65 on january 30 2014 zynga announced it has agreed to purchase naturalmotion . 66 67 on june 15 2015 zynga announced it had acquired the product