Don Mattrick and Mark Pincus pose for when Mattrick was named Zynga's CEO in 2013.
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Zynga replaces CEO Don Mattrick with a familiar face — founder Mark Pincus

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 4 min

Zynga founder and chairman Mark Pincus is replacing Don Mattrick as chief executive of the mobile and social game company.

Mattrick has resigned, effective immediately, and Pincus described the departure as amicable in a call with GamesBeat today. The move isn’t a complete surprise since Mattrick hasn’t yet succeeded in turning around the fortunes of the social gaming company. Zynga has cool products coming, but it is still relatively weak in its financial performance, and it’s still trying to find a foothold against King (Candy Crush Saga), Supercell (Clash of Clans), and Machine Zone (Game of War) in a mobile game market that could hit $30 billion this year.

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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.