Zynga closes Boston Studios to announce layoffs of nearly 5%

The Sina Science and technology news Beijing time October 24 morning, Zynga CEO Mark Ping Cass (Mark Pincus) announced in Tuesday that Zynga has closed its Boston studios and plans to close Japanese and British offices while cutting staff in Austin, Texas. "These are excellent entrepreneurial teams, so it is very difficult to make this decision," Pincus said in an e-mail to Zynga employees in Tuesday. In addition, we plan to reduce the number of partner teams slightly. "Zynga will cut nearly 5% of its full-time staff," says Cass.　　This is part of Zynga's cost-cutting plan, which also includes slashing data-hosting, advertising and external services (mainly hiring outsourced staff). Zynga will report its third-quarter earnings in Wednesday. "These cost reductions, along with initiatives to continue to configure budgets and resources around new games and partner projects, will improve our profitability and enable us to reinvest in good games, as well as the Zynga network on web pages and mobile platforms," Pincus said. People close to the situation said hundreds of employees had been cut in Boston, Austin and another studio that was not yet known. The third studio is said to be Zynga's Chicago studio.　　Sources say Zynga is trying to avoid layoffs affecting staff at San Francisco's headquarters. "This is to cut costs, but very abruptly," the source said. "The U.S. stock market ended in Tuesday, and Zynga's shares fell about 5% to $2.20." It is unclear whether Zynga's other studios will be affected.　　Other game developers, such as Luckylabs and Tapjoy, have already stretched their olive branches on Twitter to retrenched Zynga employees. Pincus said Zynga is phasing out 13 old games and slashing its investment in the Ville. The game is the main product of the Zynga Austin studio.　　Sources said the game's development would be transferred to Zynga's India studios. The Zynga Boston team is currently helping the San Francisco team develop "Farmville 2".　　The team is also developing other yet-announced games that are scheduled to be online in the coming weeks. Earlier this month, Zynga released its initial earnings in the third quarter. Zynga expects a net loss of 90 million to $105 million in the third quarter, suggesting Zynga's game performance is weak. (Lili)