Is Amazon going to challenge Zynga in social games?
Amazon.com‘s recent hire of a veteran games designer suggests the massive retailer may be about to get into the business of publishing games itself....
Reflections on GamesBeat 2011 and the road ahead in mobile games
Our well-attended GamesBeat 2011 conference took place this week, and here’s what you missed. As I noted in a preview story on mobile games, the conference was...
Google Ventures partner: Venture capitalists are bad at picking games
Investors haven’t been very good at figuring out which gaming companies will be successful, said Google Ventures partner Joe Kraus. That’s not limited to...
EA founder: we are in a dark age of video games (but Zynga is an exception)
Software licensing has hurt innovation in the video game industry — with social game maker Zynga being the exception to that rule — thanks...
Zynga’s 15th acquisition in 13 months: Toronto’s Five Mobile
Zynga has acquired the assets of Five Mobile, a Toronto-based developer of mobile apps. The new team will be known as Zynga Toronto and...
Zynga launches PrivacyVille tool to gamify user privacy
Zynga is launching PrivacyVille today, a game-like tutorial that rewards players with game points for learning more about the social game company’s privacy practices....
Long-awaited Civilization World launches public beta on Facebook
Sid Meier’s Civilization World is available today to all Facebook users as the social game enters its public beta test. After more than 22...
Zynga paid $53.3M to buy Words With Friends mobile game maker Newtoy
Tucked away in Zynga‘s initial public offering filing are the amounts that the company paid to buy a bunch of game studios in the...
Zynga planning to diversify beyond Amazon, build its own data centers
One of the little-known facts about social game giant Zynga is that it’s one of the biggest operators of cloud computing infrastructure, built to support...
Zynga IPO mints a new multi-billionaire: Mark Pincus
Zynga founder Mark Pincus (pictured far left) will benefit the most from his company’s planned initial public offering, according to Zynga’s SEC filing. The...