Zynga Inc Closing Down CityVille On April 30th

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Zynga is shutting down CityVille, the franchise that once ruled the online social gaming platform with more than 100 million active players, says a report from SFGATE. As of now, there was no comment from the San Francisco-based company regarding the matter.

 

Zynga shutting a popular title

Although the company has not made a public announcement yet, players heard about the shutdown date of April 30 after logging into the city building simulation game, where they were welcomed with the above “Dear Citizens” message.

“If you currently have coins or cash in your CityVille account, you can use them to access the game’s current content until April 30, 2015,” read the message.

During the fourth-quarter earnings call, chief financial officer David Lee said that the company has decided to bring down ten of its Facebook games. Additionally, Zynga is shuttering its Beijing studio for running CityVille.

The titles was launched in December 2010, when Zynga was becoming popular as a Facebook social games powerhouse. Just 50 days after the initial launch, the title had 61 million monthly active users, outperforming FarmVille to become the company’s most popular social game.

Exiting UK’s social gambling market

Zynga, which went public in 2011, was popular for titles like CityVille and FarmVille, as well as for Zynga Poker. However, players soon started abandoning the platform. Zynga tried to revive the spark by launching a re-designed version CityVille 2, but it was noy much of a success. The game maker also launched other games such as FarmVille 2 or CastleVille Legends, but failed to garner many new users. In December, the game maker reported that it has 108 million monthly active players across its platform.

Separately, Zynga also ended its real-money gaming partnership with bwin.party. With the termination of the partnership, the game maker will also close its ZyngaPlus Casino and Poker products. As of now, both the games are Live on Facebook, but the shut-down news has already been communicated to players.

Zynga gave no reason for the termination of the partnership with online gaming operator, but it is likely a cost-cutting measure. Zynga and bwin.party formed an alliance in April 2013, and created two real-money gaming products on Facebook known as ZyngaPlusPoker and ZyngaPlusCasino.

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