Social gaming network Zynga just got some serious funding. It raised $29 million in a B round led by Kleiner Perkins. (IVP and prior investors Union Square Ventures, Foundry Group and Avalon Ventures also participated in the round). The company is also announcing the acquisition of YoVille, a virtual-world app for Facebook with 150,000 daily active users. And, along with the cash, new Kleiner partner Bing Gordon is taking a board seat and an operating role at the startup.
Bing recently left Electronic Arts, where he was the chief creative officer and an early employee. But he was already an informal adviser to Zynga, and helped bring the deal to Kleiner. Zynga CEO Mark Pincus says:
He is super-involved in product strategy, brings the gaming DNA to us, and is an amazing CEO coach. He’s already stopped us from doing stupid things.
Like what?
Stupid things like build a PC downloadable MMO game that would cost anywhere from $5 million to $30 million, and would be free to play with virtual goods.
That’s a dig at other gaming startups. Zynga specializes in casual games you can play with your friends on social networks. Some of its hits include Texas Hold’Em (with four million hands of poker played daily), Attack, and Scramble. Al told, they attract 2.9 daily active users across Facebook, MySpace, and other social networks. On Facebook alone, Zynga’s games have 1.6 million daily active users (right behind Slide, RockYou, and SA Ventures).
The company raised $10 million just last January, and Pincus claims he still has all of that money in the bank and is cash-flow positive with 80 employees. But he feels the stakes are about to get higher as the worlds of casual social gaming and online video games collide. That means he will have to spend more money on both production values and marketing. Pincus tells me:
I think in 18 months these games are going to be highly graphical and immersive. You will be able to jump in and have a casual experience of today, and if you want to go deeper you will be able to.
As it becomes harder to get viral growth, you will need marketing.
Zynga uses its most popular games as a distribution mechansim for new games by cross-promoting them. But Zynga is not alone in trying to build a social gaming network. Competitor SGN raised $$15 million last May, and counts Jeff Bezos as an investor. Both are trying to disrupt the current gaming giants (like EA) with lower development costs, lower marketing and distribution costs, and more social gameplay.
Pincus wants to keep his player acquisition costs low, but add in some of the deeper engagement that online multiplayer games enjoy. He is building some of these games now. But he no doubt will do more buying of small fry gaming app startups. (Playfish looks like bait in this area).
Congratulations! The games are highly addictive.
29 million round – that’s alot of money.
plzz give me 29$ million now
Congratulations!
I was loving YoVille, donno what all will happen to it
This acquiring is bad thing
yea i was loving yoville also but i had like 25000 in coins and 275 in yocash one day and then the next i logged in and it was 1 coin left and about 215 yocash left i emailed support@yoville but still no answer of how i going to get my shit back so i am not really happy with yoville at the moment i feel like i got robbed and cant do a damn thing about it some feeling huh ?
IWAS LIKE I HAD 50,9877 AND 79YOCASH I LOST REALL MONEY AND COINS PLZ ANY SUPPORTER SEND ME BACK MY MONEY I LOST MANY:*
“Al told, they attract 2.9 daily active users across Facebook, MySpace, and other social networks.”
Who’s Al, and why are we listening to what he has to say?
Wait, what happened to “Kleiner Perkins doesn’t do web 2.0 investments anymore”? You don’t get much more web 2.0 than social games on Facebook…
Does anyone have a guess at what valuation this round was raised at?
$29M for casual games for social networks? You must be kidding me. Good luck.
gaming is also a good way to wash money, with Web 2.0 or with casino.
Just come up with some me too idea that wastes peoples time….and VCs lineup to fund you, where is the innovation!!?
You are sooo right !
If it’s not for a band of lemmings rushing off the cliff,
VCs wouldn’t get any exercise ; )
Innovation requires SOME risk that can be overcome
by the intelligence to envision what’s next.
Too much brain work required.
Old school games are the best. http://blabtech.blogspot.com
What does this mean to people now on Yoville ??
Congrats to Greg/YoVille and Mark. Yoville and Greg are both awesome. Greg deserves all the success and recognition… Great has always push the envelope of Facebook, operating his company in the tiny town of London, Ontario of all places, miles away from the Canadian tech hub that is Toronto.
Go Canada! =)
Take care! Zynga is a swindler. I spent 3 months’ time and won up to 600 million chips. Zynga just made up whatever reason to ban my account and confiscated all my chips. The total value taken from me is US$18,000. dollars. Friends! wake up! Do not be deceived!
小心！Zynga是尢騙子。我花了3個月時間在Zynga Poker內贏取600million chips. 他們随便作一個理由，把所有chips 沒收。按Zynga 的買價，每5 million chip = US$150計。总值是US$18,000元。朋友們！清醒罷，不要再受騙了！
Dude, 600 MILLION chips? are you serious? sounds like YOU may be the swindler. You spend 3 months and ended up w/600 million chips….was this a normal amt of chips for anyone who would playing NORMAL w/out bots and such, to be winning? I’m thinking NOT! games that give payouts in real money, don’t usually have those kinds of pay-outs for wins. sounds like they had a good reason to ban your acct, you’re lucky that’s all that happened to ya…and then you have the nerve to get on a public forum and whine about your own corruption being caught?! roflmao
Can you ask Al, what did he do with the other 0.1 of the person???
Will Zynga thrive or fail? http://snurl.com/33o0l
Something doesn’t smell right. Zynga has at least $10m in the bank and yet feels the need to raise $29m more?
I’m surprised that everybody has focused on the fact that the money is going to casual games on social networks and less on who is joining the team. Bing Gordon founded EA and has been a thought leader in the industry for the past 25+ years. Gaming is a huge industry (multi-billion $) and continues to grow quickly. There aren’t many people out there who understand it better than Bing. This is the guy that joined EA when it was a 10 person company and helped it grow to the multi-billion dollar company it is today. If anybody in VC can spot the next big thing in gaming, it’s him.
Congratulations Zynga!!
Great to see the ex-support.com guys fatting their war chest. There are a lot of competitors in this space and some shaking out in the industry is not to far away. What are some of the main differentiators for this company from their competition?
Casey
I agree that productions costs in this space are going to rise over the next few years as more people want a piece of the market. So filling up the warchest is probably wise.
29 MIL for an app, now that is a lot of money… http://blabtech.blogspot.com
Once again, those who don’t need the money get it…
We’ll see if this knee jerk investment is still valid in a year.
Zynga might have great investors but their customer service skills, responses when applications or users have issues is sorely lacking. Zynga now is responsible for Roger Dickey’s Mafia Wars application on Facebook, which is riddled with issues, players can be maxed out in a matter of mere months all causing players to leave in droves because no one will respond or fix any issues.
I, for one, would never invest in a company like this.
fuck this company… bunch of fucking wack jobs. they should just go into the merkin selling business. theyd be much better off in the long run.
dunt know much about it yety jus learning dunt even no how to move my furniture yety
hi! i love yoville sooooo much.i am addicted to it. i think yoville is the best game ever.
but i can’t play it for 2 days.my pc stops when downloading.i try to download adobe flash player 9,but it doesnt work.pls help me what i should do about this.thanx….
hola que esto solo tengo 60 años no se de que me habla esta computadora me ayudarian
Yoville needs a huge update with items. I love the game, but die hard fans of yoville are tired of the same items and themes. Lets get on top of this zynga!! Keep us happy and we’ll keep you happy
I love Yoville. I would love to find an offline version to play of it on my pc. But the problem i see with it is you can’t make money fast enough and the items cost way to much. I dont have enough time to go to the factory ever 6 hours to get a little bit of money. and there are several bugs in it. One of my profiles on myspace doesn’t seem to have friends showing when i actually have more then ten.
saben q muchachos necesito q me ayuden pk puedo hacer fiestas pero no me aparece en los evenos si q por eso nadie viene a mis fiestas q puedo hacer ?
Loving up dates and looking forward to more by the way add me http://apps.fac...ab883fa4720c74a
HELLO I WANT TO KNOW WHY THE GAME YOVILLE ZYNGA ME BUY A HOME IN THE REALTOR OFICCE 15,000 but unfortunately not HOUSE WORKS (NOT LEAVE ANY PERSON TO ENTER) so I EH ME attempts to communicate with YOVILLE FROM BUT FACEBOOK PAGE does not answer me so I would like to COULD HELP ME IN THIS please drop me NEED ANSWERS QUICKLY TO LIST MY HOME
When will YoVille be available by mobile? This feature would be amazing. Same with other apps… It’s hard to play them in full version, too much scrolling.
i think its disgustin that you have2 use your own money to buy yocash. hellooo theres a recession on!!!! why, cos it just devides the rich and poor barrier more.. another case of the fatcats gettin fatter and the poor ones gettin poorer. You cant have certain items if you dont use yocash to pay for them its descriminatory and wrong.. i know there is more than just me with this opinion
hey you zynga.. u r really pissed off after so long and without noticed, the yocash turns out.. at first, i tot tat the pet can be purchase by using coins only.. but now.. u see??? r u all ‘hungry’ of money?
Ok yeah I love Yoville, Love playing. I have spend some cash on here for yocash.. Here recently I just lost all my coins, all my yocash, my furniture,clothes,walls,floors, pets and more…….. I’ve emailed and nothing. Just a ticket and at one point it even said you replyed. Which you didn’t cause i’ve been watching my email like a hawk. So I had to email you again, Once again waiting on a reply.. Heck I paid hard earned CASH on here for the yocash. And not only did people have to worry about hackers taking thier things, But now we have to worry about you people taking our stuff. Heck I was always told if you steal someone money, you go to jail. And well that is what has happen , My money was took for a purchase I made, I got the yocash, only for a few days . And you took it back. You haven’t even put out something saying hey we are having this problem with Yoville and we know people are missing thier coins,yocash and so on but we are trying to fix it. Yet you havent done it, Instead we get this email about a ticket. That ticket isn’t getting me my stuff back… SO PLS TAKE SOME OF THOSE MILLIONS YOU GOT AND HIRE PEOPLE TO ANSWER YOUR EMAILS….and FIX THE PROBLEMS WITH YOVILLE… Thank you a die hard Yoville Player.
Can I have one (1m), ja! ja ! ja !
Zynga doesnt care about its players. its that simple. you pay those trained monkeys to piss in my face & call it rain. everytime they add one thing,another feature messes up.
heres an idea, copy what every other game developer does & actually PLAY THE GAME yourself & see how fast it pisses you off!
& no, you’ll never get a flat nickel outta me.
plz give me 129 yocash plz
i want more money in yoVille
i am rich on yoVille!!!!!!!!!!!!!
i need free chips 100m
Wow…I can’t believe it took me this long to find this site. I knew something was up with that Zyngaaaaa!!!! I knew it. Scammers, hacks, stay out of those Zynga apps people. And dont add anyone…. Its all a moneymaking marketing scheme… They are all bad companies profiting off ignorant people who thrive on instant gratification. BEWARE!!!
XX
please someone just took me 600 millions, please Zynga do something, i was working for that very hard, you should know that. it’s not little, please, and now is something wrong and i just can write here, please answer to me, i took the picture of my profile where is written i have 602 millions and it’s updated yesterday and i didn’t play for maybe two weeks because of some my personal stuff so i didn’t even had Welcome Wagon achievements and now i have it so someone sit down with my account and took me everything, please do something, please answer to me, this is so wrong, you should really do something with it, please
(((((((((( i was privacy and i have password which is made of many many letters and numbers and nobody but nobody knew and know my password, OMG PLEASE do something Zynga, this is so so wrong 
(((((
I am poker blocked…please..
Help me…
please..
Open to Texas Holdem Poker
I have learned not to trust the “Earn yocash” by filling in personal information. They have called me non-stop!! Never give them your phone number! The third party people will hound you to death! Some of them are very pushy. All I wanted to do is play a quiz game! I was getting the yocash for a while but not anymore. On one of the free advertisements for yocash wanted me to enter my administration password as required information!!!! It was one of the ones that wanted to add their browser bars on my computer for at least 10 days. What’s up with that?? I also refuse to buy play money with real money! I have been ignored when I was stiffed out of money and sent a message. Now when I try to send messages I get an automated message cutting me off from any kind of communication. Keep it up and everyone will eventually catch on and drop off! No one likes to feel cheated , stiffed or unsafe on their own computer!!
My friends and I are addicted to Yoville! I have an idea and I hope you take it as a suggestion. Having cars or any type of transportation will be great! Mobile application will be good, too! Thanks!
Zynga has raised this money be stealing…they stole $ 300.00 from me and I am on SSD now while that might sound like a lot to you but it is to me and if they have a whole department for over charges how many other people has Mark Pincus stole from and are you going to let this happen?
zynga by holdem poker is hardly
master zynga plis give me 50m free…
i’am a have pro*50m ….
i don’t have a chips
Take care! Zynga is a swindler. I spent 3 months’ time and won up to 600 million chips. Zynga just made up whatever reason to ban my account and confiscated all my chips. The total value taken from me is US$18,000. dollars. Friends! wake up! Do not be deceived!
小心！Zynga是騙子。我花了3個月時間在Zynga Poker內贏取600million chips. 他們随便作一個理由，把所有chips 沒收。按Zynga 的買價，每5 million chip = US$150計。总值是US$18,000元。朋友們！清醒罷，不要再受騙了！
thank’s for the game…… ^_^