
Turning down Zynga: Why I opted out of the $210M Omgpop buy - newobj
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/167244/Turning_down_Zynga_Why_I_opted_out_of_the_210M_Omgpop_buy.php
======
zrgiu_
Like the guy said, he lost a job. Nothing more. A developer from a company
that was bought for >$200 million surely won't have a problem finding a job
somewhere else if he wants (not to mention he also worked for Blizzard). He
deserves all the respects for not letting himself be carried away, and making
a decision with his heart. That's something you don't see often nowadays.

You have my respect, Shay Pierce.

~~~
sambeau
You now have my $0.99, Shay Pierce.

~~~
guynamedloren
Apple has your $0.29 and Shay Pierce has your $0.70... unless you just sent
him a $0.99 donation =]

~~~
sambeau
A true, if slightly pedantic point. I naturally defer. :)

------
tomgallard
I think he makes a particularly strong point about Zynga's unwillingness to
change their standard contract to let him keep control of his iPhone app.

If a company's not willing to be flexible about something like this, then it
is the last place you want to be working.

It makes Zynga look arrogant, inflexible and downright mean.

~~~
perlgeek
I don't have any experience with acquisations, so I'd like to ask how common
this is.

If a big company buys a small company, how common is it do contract
negotations with the employees of the small company? or is the "take it or
leave" approach the norm?

~~~
dfxm12
In all honesty, from Zynga's point of view, in this specific case, it wasn't
worth the headache of dealing with a non-standard contract.

Sometimes, acquisitions are for talent reasons, sometimes it is for product
reasons. In the former, you buy a company specifically to acquire a person (or
people). Those people are aware of this & have some negotiating power.
Similarly, in the latter, the acquiring company might want to keep the product
team in tact (at least for a short while), so they might have some power, but
in both cases, the other people are more or less on their own with a "take it
or leave it" type of offer with very minimal room for negotiation. There will
be examples counter to this, but this is in my experience (mostly from the
"big company" POV).

~~~
terziev
Exactly - it makes zero sense for Zynga to accept all kinds of special
requests and addendums so that everyone is on board. Big companies do bend but
only in cases when there's no alternatives.

~~~
evolve2k
I call bullshit. A contact is always between separate parties and is always
able to be adjusted and changed. Their 'you don't matter enough for us to take
your needs into account' approach is totally reflective of their culture of
behaving badly, if they valued the team as people not just numbers there is no
way the few dollars it would have cost a lawyer to clarify the intent of the
wording of a single section of a single contract would not have been totally
reasonable.

~~~
andrewem
I'd also say that the expected cost of recruiting a new programmer to replace
him - assuming they want to do so - is likely to be significantly more
expensive in both money and elapsed time than negotiating the contract
addendum.

Of course, refusing to negotiate has the effect of establishing a particular
kind of power relationship with the potential employee, which could be one of
their goals.

------
aeden
Excellent article and good on you for sticking to your principles.

"But I exhort game developers: don't join a company whose values are opposed
to your own. Values aren't just for idealists -- they matter. If a company's
practices make you uncomfortable, pay attention to your instincts and be true
to them."

Replace "game developers" with "developers" or even "humans" and it still
works.

~~~
philwelch
Unless you're broke.

~~~
wpietri
Maybe. Back when the universe was fresh and new, I would call up spammers and
talk with them. Every one had some song and dance about how broke they were.
In their view, it wasn't their fault they were acting like assholes. It was
just circumstances, just business.

Once you start screwing other people over for a living, it's a hard trap to
get out of. Partly because that's now your expertise. And partly because your
perception shifts. As Upton Sinclair said, "It is difficult to get a man to
understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"

------
alextingle
Aren't employees protected from this kind of crap in the US? In the UK, when a
business is acquired, the employees must be offered work on the same terms as
before.

So in this case, if his prior contract did not have the objectionable clause,
the new employer may not add it.

~~~
jmaygarden
I happen to like the fact that the US does not work that way in most cases.
Isn't it a bit humorous that UK laws so contort the employment relationship
that an unwanted employee has to "be made redundant?"

~~~
tomgallard
No. People can be sacked for not doing their job in the UK, but if they've
been employed for a certain length of time it is harder than in the US.

But then again, employees can also legally expect to receive a decent amount
of holiday, and a number of other rights not accorded to those in the US.

And I think the state needs to stand up for employees, because (especially
non-unionized) employees in most professions are never going to have the
bargaining power to make it a fair relationship.

(I say this as an employer not an employee)

~~~
Shenglong
Don't you think that's changing quickly in the tech industry? Can you imagine
one of your key developers leaving? Employees should earn their bargaining
power by virtue of their merit, not because of inefficient unions or state-
action.

~~~
tomgallard
Absolutely- in the case of the tech industry you're right.

But we have to remember that not every other industry works the same as ours.

Imagine an average mother working at the tills at Walmart. Is she ever going
to be good enough at that job that she is going to earn 'bargaining power' by
virtue of her merit?

No. Some jobs can be done without a huge amount of training, talent or skill.
It is in the company's interest to push down pay and working conditions as
much as possible (as the employee is easily replaceable). Therefore it is the
state's job to set minimum standards.

------
ChuckMcM
_"When that 11 p.m. call came, the decision I'd feared was exactly the one I
was being forced to make: Connectrode or a job with Zynga. I got off the phone
and called my attorney."_

This was the right move, although I wonder why it took until literally the
11th hour to make it. Now I don't know the circumstances so I don't know how
long there was between the offer and the required acceptance, but I do know
that the first thing you should do when you get such an offer, is take it to
your attorney and tell them what you want out of the deal, and see if the
agreement/contract gives you that. If not, you have your attorney draft an
addendum and you add that. Then its a simple yes/no kind of thing.

Be aware that since most companies have already spent a bunch of legal $$
getting the original contract/offer written they are going to measure their
willingness to accept it or negotiate based on how much they want you. If you
are just one of the bunch, probably not at all, if you're special in some way,
then perhaps some.

Take away is that you should not take it personally if they choose to say no,
and it sounds like the author didn't take it personally. Lately at some big
companies it seems like it would be best if your brought your attorney with
you on the first day to go over the paperwork they ask you to sign, it is
getting that complicated.

------
Jabbles
Is it usual for an acquiring company to give an exploding offer with a
timescale of days (in the US)? Especially considering a $200M acquisition will
have taken (and may continue to take) many months to complete .

~~~
efsavage
In my own limited experience, as well as what I've heard elsewhere, yes. I've
never really gotten a good answer as to why, so my guess is that some M&A
playbook somewhere says that giving people less time will make them less
likely to try and negotiate.

I have a feeling this is more common when a big company buys a small one,
and/or when it's not an explicit talent acquisition.

~~~
loceng
They can also piggyback and associate themselves on Draw Something's success,
and promote it amongst their own users - which they may have seen their some
of their userbase switching over to Draw Something, a game they didn't own or
control. What's the value of losing that mindshare? I guess potentially $200+
million.

------
mgl
There is this magic process which always surprises me (really, I can't get
used to it): the process of melting a well-performing team of strong and
motivated individuals (not only software developers, but also including
bizdevs, sales, etc.) into a monolithic sluggish disgusting structure
promoting acquiescence and submission where you more value your payroll and
pension plan than the actual work your doing every day.

It is really, really sad seeing these transformations affecting nearby
companies almost every month. And it can be really sudden, it may take even 6
months to change your software think tank into a wannabe-corporation with
timesheets and firewalls.

And I ask myself each time - is there a way to avoid this? I understand we
need to standarize "the business" at some point to make it scalable but is it
the only way? Can't we build seperate team of strong individuals and just
allow them to do their best giving them some financing and office, and let
them grow to a specific point of splittage? Wait, isn't it actually similar to
what YC is doing?

What do you think? Don't we all dream of building a giant soul-eating monster
at the of the road?

~~~
skrebbel
Not all. 37signals makes a common counter example.

I guess the message is simple: if you want your business to not either
_become_ or _get acquired by_ a nasty big monolith, don't take VC funding.

I've yet to find another way.

------
ajays
There's an interesting angle in there that I think people are missing.

To recap: Shay seemed intent on preserving control over Connectrode, even
though it wasn't making any money and going nowhere. But after getting turned
down by Zynga, he had an epiphany: he had never applied to Zynga even though
they are right there in Austin.

I've seen this happen a few times. When we don't want to do something, our
conscious mind will come up with some excuse ("their cafeteria is not good,
and I'm a strict vegan", or "they use python, and I'm a Perl guy", or
something inane like that). But deep down we already know we don't want to do
that; we're just coming up with some overt justification for our decision.

I'd be willing to bet that even if Zynga agreed to his terms, he wouldn't have
joined. His gut told him it was not a good fit for a variety of reasons, many
of which probably he himself doesn't know.

Moral of the story is: we should listen to our gut more often. It speaks very
softly, but it's usually right.

~~~
reneherse
Exactly! The dilemma with Connectrode is what brought Shay's deeper misgivings
to the surface of his consciousness.

A big takeaway from this article is what one can learn from the example of
Shay's all-too-uncommon level of insight. He should be credited for listening
to his intuition, then making a logical, rational, and moral decision based on
it.

Too often, people ignore that "quiet voice inside", much to the detriment of
their moral and personal well-being.

------
wheels
> _So what is "evil"? Can a company be evil?_

An interesting point, made by a friend [1] recently at dinner: companies can't
be evil.

Companies can't love, they can't be loyal or caring; they can't be malevolent
or heartless. Only people can be those things.

What we mean when we label companies that way is that their _employees_ have
acted that way. It's ethical hackery to absolve someone of malevolent acts
because they were in the service of an abstraction. We may still continue
using that sort of short-hand, but it's important to remember that at the end
of the day, a company that's being "evil" is really a bunch of individuals
that are collectively and actively making decisions to hurt others.

1) <http://twitter.com/tilladam>

~~~
roguecoder
Corporations are (made up of) people, my friend! ;-)

The whole purpose of a company is to absolve the individuals involved of some
legal consequences. I think right now we are having a debate over exactly how
far that absolution extends.

I could imagine a situation where each individual was acting ethically, but
the emergent behavior was still unethical. For example, each individual
manager might be promoting the worker they feel is best-qualified for the job,
but over-all hiring patterns end up being discriminatory due to small,
unnoticed biases. Corporations are emergent systems, much like programs
themselves. Race conditions, concurrency, stampeding herd dynamics, failing to
have anyone be responsible for important considerations: all the downfalls of
parallelism apply to human organizations as well.

~~~
eaurouge
"Corporations are (made up of) people, my friend! ;-)"

That's funny because for the past few months, my mind has replayed Romney's
quote every time I've heard someone say 'corporation'. I don't know why, it
just happens.

You make some good points, of course. A company is a single entity after all.

------
tmh88j
>It views players as weak-minded cash cows; and it views its developers as
expendable, replaceable tools to create the machines that milk those cows.

>Because the company's values are completely opposed to my own values,
professionally and creativel

>An evil company is trying to get rich quick, and has no regard for the harm
they're doing along the way

Why does he not give any examples of how Zynga is evil? Don't get me wrong,
I'm not trying to defend them. I honestly don't even know and now I'm curious.
The only thing I know about Zynga is from their stock revoking mess that
occurred around the IPO.

~~~
barefoot
Well, "evil" is fairly subjective and often times depends on what side of the
table you are on, as I think he points out in the article.

As for specific reasons why they could be viewed as such, there are plenty out
there already. Here's an AMA with a previous engineer that doesn't paint a
pretty picture:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/pc6j9/iama_former_full...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/pc6j9/iama_former_fulltime_zynga_engineer_quit_6_months/)

------
kenrikm
I purchased a copy of his game to support him as an independent developer. As
developer who has released games in the Appstore I know what it takes to bring
your projects to fruition and can understand why he does not want to let his
game die. I must say it's actually a great game and deserving if you're 99¢. I
wish him luck and I hope he does great with his company.

------
junto
You have to applaud the author for his due diligence.

Job contracts are frequently overly zealous and heavily biased in favour of
the employer, rather than the employee. Conflicts of interest are sometimes
hard to spot. I have been in this situation, and it isn't pleasant.

Always qualify and question everything. The OP has earned himself the right to
pat himself on the back (in my humble opinion).

------
babuskov
Although any small game would like to be acquired by Zynga, if you're really
good and have great ideas, maybe you should not - because your company might
become as big as Zynga in just a couple of years.

This deal looks like win-win, but maybe it's a bigger win for Zynga, as it
removes one potentially dangerous competitor from the market.

~~~
rplnt
Maybe they'll have money/lawyers to run the awesome tetris (blockles) OMGPOP
had and pulled out because of the Tetris-troll company which thinks it owns
some sort of copyright on game mechanics.

------
geoffw8
If I'm genuinely honest, I'm not sure if I would have made the same decision.
I actually thought for a minute or two that Connectrode was a city, and he
didn't want to leave his family. That I get.

But I mean, its OK to love something and we all love our creations, but I
wonder if I'd have viewed the thing that I loved, as a platform that was
moving me onto the fastest growing, possibly largest game platform of our
generation. The biggest player of the industry "I" belong to.

It would have been a sad moment perhaps, but I'd have sacrificed it in a
ceremony if it meant that much, but tailed it into a drinks of celebration and
the start of a new zynga-charged chapter. Just my 2c.

~~~
andrewfelix
I think 'Connectrode' is somewhat symbolic here. It represents something he is
and does outside of his standard workplace. it sounded like signing the Zynga
contract could potentially threaten everything that 'Connectrode' represented
to him.

------
bicknergseng
This part has been alluded to, but I wanted to pull it out in its entirety
because I think it's important. Whether or not people agree with it is also
important.

"When an entity exists in an ecosystem, and acts within that ecosystem in a
way that is short-sighted, behaving in a way that is actively destructive to
the healthy functioning of that ecosystem and the other entities in it
(including, in the long term, themselves) -- yes, I believe that that is evil.
And I believe that Zynga does exactly that.

A "good" company is one which provides goods or services of real value in
exchange for a fair price. A good game company recognizes that its developers
are the ones who create that value, and treats them as valuable, especially if
they are good at what they do. It follows practices that are sustainable. And
it ensures that, at the end of the day, the world is a little better for
having their goods and services.

An evil company is trying to get rich quick, and has no regard for the harm
they're doing along the way. It's not making things of value, it's chasing a
gold rush. An evil game company isn't really interested in making games, it's
too busy playing a game -- a game with the stock market, usually. It views
players as weak-minded cash cows; and it views its developers as expendable,
replaceable tools to create the machines that milk those cows."

------
bigiain
Ooooh - I love a good bridge burning!

(I hope this wonderful rant gets you the boost in app sales it deserves. 70%
of my 0.99c is headed your way - and I _never_ play puzzle games…)

------
tlrobinson
Can any lawyers comment on whether his concerns were legitimate? I can't
imagine any standard employment contract claiming any sort of rights over all
your previous work. Say it wasn't an indie game, rather some other company's
game he was the sole developer of? Or if he had simply incorporated a company
he was the sole owner of?

Certainly they could prohibit him from continuing to work on it while employed
at Zynga, though.

------
far33d
Full disclosure. I'm a Zynga employee. I run the Boston studio, which was
built out of a startup acquisition and is responsible for Adventure World.
This comment is 100% my own opinion, not that of my employer. I'm an engineer
and entrepreneur at heart, a long-time hacker news contributor, and now a GM /
product guy. Above all else, I'm not evil. I claim that no one I work with is
evil either.

It's a shame Shay didn't join Zynga so that he could see how we really operate
and how we really think about our players instead of taking on what is
essentially an uninformed and cliched conventional wisdom opinion about the
company.

I don't know anything about contracts, so I have no opinions about that part.
I just take issue w/ the last half of his article that slanders me and my team
without any first-hand knowledge in order to market his new dev shop.

~~~
psykotic
> how we really think about our players instead of taking on what is
> essentially an uninformed and cliched conventional wisdom opinion about the
> company.

Judging a company by what they do publicly rather than what they might say or
think privately seems like a smart move on his part.

If you want your peers to think better of Zynga, the onus is on you, not them.

------
muyuu
Pity he didn't release Connectrode for Android.

~~~
mdonahoe
His app says "powered by flixel" which looks like some Action script library.
Maybe a port is easier than most.

------
joering2
Good read. Here is my 2c:

Mr. Pierce: here is something you need to look into with a competent attorney
- I don't see a reason, with your next game, why you should not use the term:
"Programmed by 'Draw Something'(r) Developer". Ability to use this line alone
(which is the truth), after all the media-steam Zynga/OMGPOP's deal is
getting, should land you a dream job at almost any game-developing house
around the world!

Good luck with your future endeavors. And let us know what you're working on.

~~~
cgarvey
'I don't see a reason, with your next game, why you should not use the term:
"Programmed by 'Draw Something'(r) Developer"'

You mean beside him saying he never worked on that project, right? Seems like
a step backward off of the moral high-ground he's taking to lie about
something like that.

------
TeeWEE
Respect. The love for your work, your passion and having your own app out
there is more important than all the money you can get.

If i ever start a company i want this guy on board.

------
linoox2424
As a former Zynga employee, and someone who personally held patented IP and
copyright ownership of code that still generates me personal revenue (as well
as through my employment), Zynga was in no way threatening to it. His whole
argument about "Connectrode VS Zynga" is really bias. He waited until the last
minute to bring this up instead of being up front with Zynga about it from the
beginning. I was, and there was no problem.

~~~
krschultz
I'm not sure you understand the article. The difference between 'beginning'
and 'last minute' was approximately 10 hours.

------
markokocic
The headline is a "little bit" misleading. I first thaught it is about Omgpop
owner refusing to sell to Zynga for $210M.

------
tlogan
I think Omgpop made mistake of selling itself to Zynga: Omgpop could become
bigger than Zynga in years if not months. Of course, I don't know anything
about what happened internally but Omgpop looked like Groupon of games
industry from outside.

------
dpcan
Key words: I lost a job, that's all.

He got paid for what he owned of OMGPOP, he didn't opt out of that. Title is
deceiving. This is a post about someone who opted out of a _job offer_ because
of a personal project he felt more passionate about.

------
robryan
Liking the app, would be great if he kept up with the independent games.

------
pirateking
Respect.

I just purchased Connectrode, as well as his other game Great Land Grab Plus
(mainly because I had a very similar idea for a game in the early iPhone SDK
days, and wanted to check out his take on it).

------
iamleppert
I'm really surprised someone hasn't already registered BoycottZynga.com by
now. As computing professionals, we should be ashamed to call these people
colleagues.

------
calydon
Well balanced arguments with a very reasonable tone. Rare, and appreciated.
Respect to this dev and I hope Connectrode 2 does change his life.

------
ramblerman
I really detest linkbait titles like this.

He turned down the job offer at zynga not the equity, or the buyout itself.

------
drumdance
I believe good vs. evil is a poor way to look at anything. Using that
formulation lowers your IQ by 10 points.

[http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/12/the...](http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/12/they-
have-transcribed-my-tedx-talk-on-stories.html)

------
Codhisattva
This guy should be a hero to all indy devs out there.

------
braveheart1723
beautiful post - nice to see someone stand for something :)

------
tbsdy
Should be clear from his comments that he didn't give the $210M figure... a
gamasutra editor made this!

~~~
deathwarmedover
You're right, Shay posts:

 _One clarification: I didn't choose the title of this article and I am not
confirming or denying any sum of how much the Zynga/OMGPOP buyout was for - I
honestly was not privy to what that amount was, and I don't know anything more
than the public information on that point._

------
throwa
Big respect man. your actions reminds me of this quote; "A man who has nothing
to die for, has nothing to live for."

