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Facebook Mafiosi Go To the Mattresses vs. Zynga

Posted by Soulskill on from the concrete-galoshes dept.

sympleko writes "Zynga has the lion's share of traffic in Facebook applications, and Mafia Wars is one of their most popular social games. Collapsing under the weight of over 26 million users, Zynga has been scrambling to thwart hard-core gamers who reverse-engineer URLs or script the game to optimize their enjoyment. Many of the workarounds have annoyed users who were accustomed to various game features, and even worse, the hastily-deployed changes have resulted in many players losing access to the game, in-game prizes, or statistics. Fed up with a software company seemingly bent on discouraging people from enjoying their product, a number of tagged players have organized a boycott of all Zynga games. The first 24-hour boycott on Sunday 12/13 resulted in an 11% decline in Daily Active Users, and an emergency thread on Zynga's forums (from which most of the flames were deleted). The current boycott, extending Wednesday through Sunday is being supported by a 428K strong Facebook group. At issue is the social contract between software companies and their devoted user base, as well as the nefarious tactics Zynga has used to raise cash."

2 of 102 comments (clear)

  1. Figures by TheModelEskimo · · Score: 5, Informative

    Business folk have been shooting around Pincus interviews for months now. "What is it that makes him so great?" "How can I invent a simple Facebook game and be rich?" "It's so easy, right?" etc.

    It's bad enough that a trusted associate is trying to get me to drop everything and develop "apps," because everybody knows they're the next big thing.

    But the fact is, Pincus and his people (with great encouragement from his mentor, who *only* cares about money) looked up every sleazy trick in the book and put them all out there. Now they get Sleazy results, and the media suddenly have occasion to finish up the Pincus Story by presenting a dark side. They'll be all over that.

  2. Re:From a former employee of Mark Pincus by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Per Wikipedia

    Farmtown Release: Early 2009
    Farmville Release: June 2009

    The mafia games are trickier, the best info I could find pointed to Mob Wars as being the first mafia game with over 2.5 million players by august 2008. Mafia Wars was released Jan 1st 2009.

    For their other major games:

    Fishville, based off of Fish World and Happy Aquarium
    Zynga poker.... well, it's poker. Not much original there.
    Petville, based off of Pet Society
    YoVille, based off of Habbo Hotel (non-facebook game)
    Cafe World, based off of Restaurant City

    Also see zynga's article in wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zynga#Replication_of_existing_games