Mark Pincus (left) sold Zynga to Take-Two Interactive for $12.7 billion.
Mark Pincus (left) sold Zynga to Take-Two Interactive for $12.7 billion.
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Why Mark Pincus sold Zynga for $12.7B and still has unfinished business with blockchain games

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 13 min

Mark Pincus started Zynga in 2007 on a vision of social gaming reaching everyone. He guided the company through the free-to-play revolution in games, executed an IPO, and eventually sold it to Take-Two for $12.7 billion.

You would think that he would be happy with the outcome. But along the way to the mass market, Pincus said that social gaming ran into obstacles like the platforms, and it stopped short of fulfilling its destiny of reaching everybody on the planet. Zynga continues to thrive under Take-Two, but Pincus remains interested in seeing technology and gaming move forward.

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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.