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Zynga’s Don Mattrick and Clive Downie describe their strategy for 2014 and today’s results (excerpts)

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 9 min

Zynga dropped a few bombshells today for investors to absorb. For the first time in seven months, new chief executive Don Mattrick and chief operating officer Clive Downie revealed their strategy in an unscheduled earnings conference call.

They announced that Zynga was buying mobile game maker Natural Motion for $527 million, Zynga was laying off 314 employees, and it eked out a slight profit in the fourth quarter and would target being profitable on an adjusted earnings basis in 2014.

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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.