After yesterday’s news of Zynga’s 520+ worker layoff (nearly 18% of their entire staff), it comes to no surprise that the layoffs would extend to OMGPOP, which was acquired by Zynga nearly a year ago. However, I don’t think anyone could have foretold how the employees, many of who are high-up executives of Zynga, were told: through Facebook.
After putting so much money into buying the company (it was purchased for $180 million dollars), you’d think Zynga would try their best to turn back some of their losses, but who knows. Zynga has declined to comment on which of their many studios will be shut-down, but comments on Twitter by the official @OMGPOP twitter and many of their former staffers seem to show that OMGPOP will be shut down by the end of the layoff process in August.
Update:
The following day, some of the former OMGPOP staff has said that they are “relieved” to be laid-off from Zynga, many of whom burned and ripped up their Zynga shirts, others going out for ice-cream.
“Most layoffs are sad. You imagine big corporate settings where security is there to lead people out of the office so they don’t make a scene. This was the opposite.”
Many former staffers also expressed that Zynga laid off their most talented workers, and that the company will die off fast, and that their only assigned job was to fix bugs for their Draw Something 2 game.
“We regret nothing, not even being acquired. We got the chance to push Draw Something to the level we wanted, and we never took anything for granted. We lived through this experience that is very unique. It was a great ride. I think a lot of these people will be meeting up again in the future.”
