Zynga And Facebook

The new year will see the termination of the special relationship that has existed between social gaming giant Zynga and the worlds' largest social networking site. The deal saw Facebook guarantee a certain amount of traffic to Zyngas' products and in return Zynga provided exclusivity to its well known popular games such as Mafia Wars and Farmville. The arrangement will cease in March 2013 with the upshot being that Zynga will be free to launch and promote anything it wishes to, on its own Zynga platform. It's been somewhat of a symbolic relationship and to a certain extent Zynga has been instrumental in the growth of Facebook as apart from the regular social aspect of the site, millions of users logged on specifically to play the games that Zynga provided. The news has sparked a further drop in Zyngas share price as it fell a further 13% and the company has announced significant job cuts and studio closures. It had already lost many of its executive staff due to the fact that Facebook provided around 80% of their revenue. Although there has been no announcement, this move will allow Facebook to develop its own games platform, with the only statement being that the closure of the current deal will bring Zynga in line with the relationship that Facebook has with other studios and development companies.