Internet, Online Games | featured news

Zynga posted first quarter 2013 earnings that beat analysts expectations, but shares are trading down after-hours on future outlook.

A year ago, OMGPOP CEO Dan Porter sold the games-maker to Zynga for $180 million-plus, and became the head of the company's New York outpost. Now he’s out. Porter’s departure isn’t a huge surprise, given both his timing (presumably long enough to hit certain employment and/or earn-out goals) and the fact that Zynga ended up writing off at least half of its OMGPOP deal a few months after it closed.

Pangalore offers up a unique approach to social gaming with a free-to-play model that doesn't break the game.

Possibly trying to hide the grim news by announcing it during Apple’s event, we’ve just independently confirmed that Zynga has shut down its Boston office and laid off 2/3s of the employees in its Austin office, including cuts to The Ville and Bingo teams. We’ve now confirmed the initial report from Justin Maxwell. We’ve also just heard Zynga may have an all-hands meeting this afternoon.

How time-wasting video games escaped the arcade, jumped into our pockets and took over our lives.

Modern Web standards are taking gaming on the Web to the next level. We took a brief look at how Mozilla and Google are contributing to the effort. Standards-based open Web technologies are increasingly capable of delivering interactive multimedia experiences; the kind that used to only be available through plugins or native applications. This trend is creating new opportunities for gaming on the Web.

We're going to feel a little guilty if this news gets you fired. But you can now play "Angry Birds" on Facebook.

Zynga is poised to harvest some cold hard cash in its initial public offering. Who knew that selling virtual cows and digital corn on Facebook would create a $7 billion company?

Zynga offers free games through Facebook, then studies data on how its audience plays them. It uses its findings to fiddle with the games to get people to play longer, tell more Facebook friends about them and buy more virtual goods.

A World Bank study to be released Thursday reports that the online gaming industry has grown into a $3 billion business that provides living wages to migrant workers in Asia who play games all day, amass virtual currency and sell it to wealthy customers in the Western world for actual cash.