Zynga to cut workforce by 5 %

The American social and media gaming firm has also recently seen a large number of executives depart including John Schappert as COO and its Chief Creative Officer, Mike Verdu.

The cost-cutting measure was announced via the blog of Mark Pincus, CEO of Zynga, as a way for the firm to ‘streamline our operations, focus our resources on our most strategic opportunities and invest in our future’.

“We’ve had to make some tough decisions around products, teams and people,” read the statement from Pincus. In addition, Zynga declared that it will be ‘sunsetting’ 13 older games while also ‘significantly reducing’ its investment in The Ville. It will also close its Boston studio and propose shutting facilities in Japan and Great Britain.

“Additionally, we are reducing staffing levels in our Austin studio,” Pincus added. “All of these represent terrific entrepreneurial teams, which make this decision so difficult. In addition to these studios, we are also making a small number of partner team reductions.”

Zynga currently employs approximately 3,200 people and went public in December with shares priced at ten dollars each. However, the firm has since lost 85 percent of its value after shares peaked in March at an individual cost of U$S 15.91.

“We don’t take these decisions lightly as we recognise the impact to our colleagues and friends who have been on this journey with us,” read the statement from Pincus.

“We appreciate their amazing contributions and will miss them. This is the most painful part of an overall cost reduction plan that also includes significant cuts in spending on data hosting, advertising and outside services, primarily contractors.

“These reductions, along with our ongoing efforts to implement more stringent budget and resource allocation around new games and partner projects, will improve our profitability and allow us to reinvest in great games and our Zynga network on web and mobile.”