Games developer Zynga have reportedly laid off more than 100 employees and is planning to eliminate 13 games and shutdown studios in various countries to compensate for its slowing sales growth.
The maker of social media games including "FarmVille" and "Texas HoldEm Poker" revealed that it will slash 5 percent of its workforce, which will mark the first-ever round of layoffs in its history.
In a letter addressed to the employees, Zynga's Founder and CEO Mark Pincus said, "As part of some of the strategic changes to streamline our operations, we've had to make some tough decisions around products, teams and people. We will unfortunately be parting ways with approximately 5 percent of our full time workforce."
Reports began surfacing on Twitter about major layoffs already at Zynga's Chicago office and at Zynga Austin, one of which from one Mr. Justin Maxwell said, "Zynga just laid off 100+ employees (incl. my friends) in its Austin office during the Apple Event. Gave them 2 hours to vacate."
"We are closing the Zynga Boston studio and proposing closures of the Zynga Japan and UK studios. Additionally, we are reducing staffing levels in our Austin studio," the letter said.
The memo from Pincus further stated that the San Francisco-based gaming company will scrap 13 older games and will significantly reduce its investment in The Ville.
Zynga suffered a 78 percent fall since the December IPO on disappointing demand for its games on Facebook. In addition, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckeberg said the payments Facebook received from Zynga have dropped 20 percent in the last quarter. The company began to sink further as it failed to come up with new popular games for mobile devices.
Zynga created popular games such as "Farmville" which at its peak, attracted nearly 82 million players a month. Zynga acquired its rival company OMGPOP earlier this year for a reported $200 million.
