
Mark Pincus, Zynga’s Founder, Returns as C.E.O - downandout
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/09/technology/mark-pincus-zyngas-founder-returns-as-ceo.html
======
JonFish85
Good, I hope the man goes down with his ship and loses every dollar he's made
off of the company. These in-app-purchase types of games are bad, but Zynga is
one of the worst.

These games don't strive to solve any problem, and in fact don't strive to
make anyone's lives better. They essentially run an extortion game: "pay us to
scratch the itch we give you."

And god forbid they get access to the gambling markets, because suddenly they
will descend like vultures onto a group of people who lack the self control to
spend their money.

They don't strive to make people happy; explicitly they make the most money
when people are nervous that they might lose the hours/days/weeks of "work"
they put into whatever this app is. They strip-mine people's souls for cash. I
hope Zynga, King, et al. nothing but the worst. I don't like them, I don't
like their leadership, I don't like their investors and I don't like the
employees that work knowingly taking advantage of people (psychology majors
who actively exploit people's base instincts for the explicit purpose of
extracting money with no positive side effects).

Their games are the online equivalent of an emotionally abusive boyfriend or a
drug dealer. They draw you in under the auspices of fun & cheeriness, but it
quickly devolves into a quagmire of dependency.

As a quick disclaimer, I've never worked for a game company, never mind any of
the one's I've mentioned. I think Pincus is a scumbag businessman for many
reasons, some of which I listed here and some of the reasons that others have
listed (i.e. stock take back, spyware bundling, game stealing, pump & dump (I
know it's not the textbook term for it)).

~~~
swamp40
The worst one I ever saw was an iPad app with a cute and cuddly baby that you
had to take care of every few hours.

If you stopped playing the game for a while, the baby wound up in the ICU,
with tubes and a mask hooked up to it.

And the only way to get the baby out of the hospital was to pay money.

It made my kids cry. I was so mad I banished any game made by that company.

Pathetic.

~~~
im3w1l
What was the name of the game?

------
Animats
Pincus to a U.C. Berkeley business school audience in 2009: _" I knew that I
wanted to control my destiny, so I knew I needed revenues right fucking now.
Like, I needed revenues now. So I funded the company myself but I did every
horrible thing in the book to—just to get revenues right away. I mean we gave
our users poker chips if they downloaded this zwinky toolbar which was like, I
don't know, I downloaded it once and couldn't get rid of it. [laughs]"_[1][2]

[1] [http://www.vimeo.com/3738428](http://www.vimeo.com/3738428) [2]
[http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/09/how-zynga-went-
from-...](http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/09/how-zynga-went-from-social-
gaming-powerhouse-to-has-been/)

Newer Zynga employees, this is your new boss. Is this someone you want to work
for?

~~~
mmanfrin
Not to mention the whole thing with him and his exec team demanding employees
give up their options prior to IPO:

[http://www.cnet.com/news/zynga-to-employees-give-back-our-
st...](http://www.cnet.com/news/zynga-to-employees-give-back-our-stock-or-
youll-be-fired/)

~~~
davidu
This was probably one of the most misunderstood stories of recent memory.

Anyone who has built a company of scale knows what Mark was dealing with: An
employee who was given an outsized grant that far exceeded the contributions
of the employee. Grants last 4 years, and sometimes you make grants with the
expectation that an employee will grow into their grant.

Typically you have two choices in this scenario: Fire the employee, or suck it
up. He invented a third, re-negotiate the options package.

It's really not as horrible as it was made out to be.

I know I'm going to get voted way down for this, but until you've been in
those shoes, it's really hard not understand why he did this instead of firing
the people... which is what usually happens when this situation comes up.

~~~
stanfordkid
My impression is that labor laws don't work that way. If a person meets
expectations for the current role then the company cannot fire them simply
because they are over-compensated -- I think the employee would have the right
to file a wrongful termination suit if that were the case, even if it is "at-
will" employment. To prevent this liability the company would likely have to
go through the "gestures and motions" of a performance improvement plan before
firing said employee (even if behind the scenes the true reason was purely to
reclaim over-allocated equity).

Now I'm sure Marc consulted lawyers before rolling out this re-negotiation
plan but this seems like gray area to me.

~~~
cookiecaper
Why wouldn't you be able to fire someone because you think they cost too much
money? This is a perfectly acceptable reason to fire someone under at-will
employment. It's probably also one of the most common reasons.

There are very few reasons that don't fly for a firing under at-will
employment. Discrimination against a protected class is the big one, and
companies do the performance plan thing so that they have something objective
to point to should an employee ever try to claim they were discriminated
against. The thing about performance plans is they take 3-6 months to mature
into a full firing. If a company needs to clear out an employee quicker than
that, they'll forgo the performance plan.

The handful of other reasons you can't fire someone are things like the FMLA
and retaliation for good-faith reports of harassment or violations of labor
law. Pretty much any other reason will probably work.

I Am Not a Lawyer and This Has Not Been Legal Advice (tm). Everything I've
said is probably wrong.

------
chollida1
Down from 2.90 to 2.60 after hours on the news. I wish them well but I think
it will be a tough road ahead.

I worked for a company called Corel in early 2000. We had some really great
people but the biggest drag on us was the fact that in the late 90s Corel
released some really shitty versions of their software.

it was tough to come back from that and I fear this is the same issue that
Zynga faces. Once you've obtained a negative image in peoples minds its very
tough to change that perception.

Looking back on what Zynga did, it looks like early apple. They had a first
mover advantage in a growing market, and just couldn't make the transition
from their earliest products to new streams of revenue very efficiently.

So I guess this places them in a position close to the late 80s apple.

In my opinion Zynga has 2 big issues:

1) What does Zynga do now that Facebook has cut off their main driver for
viral growth

2) How do they get back the large group of people who have been introduced to
casual gaming and then left after their first year.

------
interesting_att
I am surprised Don Mattrick would be let go, especially since most of the
projects he oversaw have not been released yet. But given that we're dealing
with Mark Pincus, the founder famous for wanting control, I guess this was
expected.

To those who are unaware, Mattrick was primarily let go for his failure with
Zynga Poker. The updated version killed user engagement so badly, the game may
never recover. Zynga Poker is one of the company's most interesting assets,
given that online gambling will be legalized in the next few years.

Mattrick represented a shift in Zynga: instead of low-brow clones of
competitors, Zynga would focus on high-polish triple AAA games. It was a
daring strategy, since Zynga's reputation single handedly scared away many
amazing game designers. You can copy a farming game easily and get decent
results if you have a team of data analysts. It is quite difficult to copy a
great hardcore RTS and get good results. Zynga spent 500 million USD to buy
NaturalMotion, an excellent game developer in this space. They spent a ton of
money on their slots game, acquiring valuable IP licenses + great slot
designers. They spent a ton of money getting the Tiger Woods license. Etc etc.

Pincus has never shown the ability to manage high quality game designers. He
has only showed the ability to manage MBA-types, who aren't considered the
most creative of the bunch. Mattrick would have been a better leader in this
vertical. Any midcore/hardcore gamer would rather want the XBOX CEO over
Pincus.

What does this signal for Zynga's future?

1) All of Mattrick's high-polish products are now under the leadership of
someone who isn't as geared towards this vertical.

2) Increased importance for social casino and real money gambling for the
company- The fact that this is the main reason why Mattrick got fired
highlights Pincus' goal of dominating real money gambling.

#1 is a negative signal, #2 is a positive signal. I'd agree with the rest of
the market and say this is a net-loss for Zynga.

~~~
rhizome
I seem to remember seeing this someplace before, where an executive on the
upslope is fired and the new guy gets the credit for good new projects soon to
release.

~~~
interesting_att
Exactly. If I were Pincus and was a rational self-interested agent, I would've
gotten rid of Mattrick at this time, and then reap the benefits of Mattrick's
game end of the year. If they succeed? Pincus is a genius. If they fail?
Mattrick was an idiot. Can't lose.

------
DigitalSea
You know you're going through hard times when your future business plan
involves bringing back Mark Pincus. This guy is the cancer of the business
world. The shady tactics that Mark used to get Zynga to the stage where it was
once at the top of the gaming world before it crashed and burned would make
even the most rogue leaders blush.

------
chatmasta
I've always found the story of Zynga to be entertaining and fun to watch. Mark
Pincus is a refreshingly down-to-earth leader. He takes a lot of shit, and his
company is the butt of a lot of jokes (probably doesn't help having a huge
office right next to caltrain as a constant reminder). Despite this, Pincus
always has a smile on his face and an air of confidence to him. I respect
this.

Pincus is a hustler. He built Zynga from the ground up, leveraged it into
massive investment, but unfortunately was a little too early to the mobile
gaming party. Zynga got screwed because it depended on facebook platform, and
new apps emerged that did not. Supercell showed how to profit from mobile
gaming and avoid platform lock-in. iOS and Android also dominated Facebook
platform so any game depending on Facebook lost to competitors who built
around iOS/Android.

The early moves of Pincus were very impressive, and if he can replicate that
execution, I bet he can also bring Zynga through a strong recovery. I respect
his confidence and leadership. Seems like a _cool dude_.

~~~
davycro
> The early moves of Pincus were very impressive

His early moves were deplorable. He cloned-- pixel by pixel-- emerging games
built by small developers, then seeded them with traffic from other Zynga
games.

~~~
golergka
Everyone did. Developers he stole from stole it from someone else, the whole
social game space was a clone war. But Zynga was consistently succesful in it.

Do you remember the tower-breaking game on Kongregate and iOS that Angry Birds
cloned? Or Backyard Monsters that was the original Clash of Clans?

~~~
GoodIntentions
>Everyone did. Developers he stole from stole it from someone else

Except perhaps the dev with the initial idea? Stealing someone else's idea
might be widespread, but it doesn't make it right.

~~~
paulhauggis
I suppose this goes against the common idea here on HN that the idea doesn't
matter and you should share it with everyone, even during the early stages of
a startup.

Zynga shows me exactly why I don't share my ideas early on: A company with
more money and more resources can bring the idea to market much faster than a
1 or 2 person shop.

I think the people that keep spreading this idea have the resources and money
to 1) create their own ideas quickly and 2) take someone else's idea.

~~~
amirmc
They were not ideas. They were working versions.

At some point you _have_ to put your ideas/implementation/whatever out into
the open (you might even have to _advertise_ its existence). At that point,
anyone better resourced than you can probably just mimic your work.

What alternative does anyone really have?

------
rhaker
Wow. I wish Mr. Pincus all the best and hope he can pull off a Steve Jobs -
esque "job" and revive a company from the clutches of death.

It is quite possible that he can try to do something really innovative and
pivot to a complete new direction. He certainly has the funds to do something
big, given he was an early investor in facebook.

~~~
aikah
Pincus is no Jobs. He "pumped and dumped" Zynga, he'll be out of Zynga in less
than a year. But I'm sure he'll make a lot of money off Zynga in the mean time
,like he did before.

~~~
harryh
I'll bet you $250 he's still CEO on April 8, 2016.

~~~
enraged_camel
[http://longbets.org](http://longbets.org)

Go ahead and put your money where your mouth is. :)

~~~
harryh
Unfortunately it looks like longbets have to be at least 2 years. I routinely
make wagers like this and always pay up if I lose (though my opponents
sometimes welch). I'm super easy to find on the internet.

------
srehnborg
My hope that this finally signals Zynga's pivot back into the gambling world.

------
hellbanner
Facebook games are an intriguing phenomenon:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cow_Clicker](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cow_Clicker)
\-- the creator received death threats when he took the game offline

------
ElectricFeel
Is anyone else reminded of 3M by this? Also, Apple had Steve Jobs leave,
company founder, then Jobs returned & Apple was swell. Similar situation.
Maybe it's the grandpa in me but I feel like one gets a sense of that 'CEO
feeling' at any company.. that is is why they're called the CEO.

------
jarsin
Zynga shares dropped 10% on this news.

------
comrade1
This man is cancer. The fact that he is back at Zynga shows just how far
they've fallen. They've lost all of their good execs - people from ea, from
google, etc and now it's just the dregs. And the bung hole plug has finally
returned, but after the keg has drained.

edit: sorry, but I thought about it some more and Zynga is probably hopeless
without someone aggressive like Pincus at the helm. However, I don't think
he's going to be able to hire anyone good after the disaster of the last few
years.

They'll have to start over. He can hire some new talented people. Rebuild
their marketing team, hire some good engineers, and then when they're on the
verge of making it big fire them all and take their options while hiring big
names from bay area companies...

