Zynga was named after Mark Pincus' late dog.
Zynga was named after Mark Pincus' late dog.
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Zynga’s turnaround: How once-beleaguered game company plans for 2019 growth

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 8 min

Zynga went public in 2011, and it grew quickly on the strength of social games like FarmVille. But it hit the skids in 2013, and it began going downhill. Frank Gibeau, a former Electronic Arts executive, joined as CEO in 2016, taking over from Mark Pincus, the original CEO, who replaced his own replacement, Don Mattrick, who was Gibeau’s former colleague from EA. (Did you follow all that?)

It was a long slog, but Zynga has gone through a turnaround. In fact, Gibeau said this week in an interview with GamesBeat that the company’s “turnaround is now complete.” The company broke even, even with 1,778 employees, and it is 39 percent bookings growth in 2019.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.