Zynga buys Draw Something maker OMGPop

http://money.cnn.com/2012/03/21/tech....htm?iid=HP_LN

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Originally Posted by CNN

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Zynga is moving fast to snap up one of the most buzzed-about gaming apps since "Angry Birds." The company said Wednesday it is buying OMGPop, the maker of hit game "Draw Something."

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Launched just six weeks ago, Draw Something has already been downloaded 35 million times. It currently tops both the paid and free (for an ad-supported version) app bestseller lists in Apple's (AAPL, Fortune 500) iTunes App Store and Google's (GOOG, Fortune 500) Play store.

The game lets users doodle and sketch while other players guess what they've drawn. The app stores are filled with gleeful testimonials about its addictive joys.

Draw Something is by far the biggest hit from OMGPop, a six-year-old company that has pivoted several times in search of a breakout hit. One billion drawings have been created in the last week -- more than 3,000 new per second at the game's peak.

CNNMoney caught up with OMGPop CEO Dan Porter the day before the Zynga deal was announced.

"You can go along for three or four years with no success, and then one day you can open the door and crazy things can happen," Porter said of Draw Something's sudden success.

Without commenting directly on Zynga, Porter said he would only be interested in being acquired by a company that would let OMGPop keep experimenting.
"We took a real big risk with this game, and we created something that's very different than any game out there," he said."For us, it's 'who is going to let us keep making out-of-the-box games like that?' Because that's what's interesting."

In a conference call on Wednesday following the acquisition news, Porter said: "It was clear to me from the beginning that Zynga got what we wanted to do."
With a price tag rumored to be around $200 million, OMGPop is the biggest acquisition yet for Zynga (ZNGA), which likes to buy up promising ventures. It spent $105 million on those deals over the past two years, it said in a recent regulatory filing.

Zynga is based in San Francisco. OMGPop will remain at its headquarters in New York. Porter said that he plans to stay with the company as general manager of Zynga New York and looks forward to turning New York into "a new hotbed" for gaming.

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I dislike Zynga. I do not believe that their buyout will bode well for the remains of OMGPop's future.

pomegranate Zynga. :( Why you gotta ruin everything.

Lol at OMGPOP becoming best known for Draw Something...

This is the worst.

I'm gonna quote someone from Tumblr:

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Originally Posted by Tumblr user

Although I don’t have a financial stake in either of these companies, news like this always makes me a bit angry. Zynga is the worst thing to happen to interactive media since EA.

Here’s what happens every time a transaction like this occurs:

Zynga is a company reseller. They buy companies that make good games, fire half their staff, and make the rest work under terrible development conditions (they cut salaries and force developers to build games that comply with their absurd standards of user data collection).

To recap:

The two guys who created OMGPop run away with $400 million. Zynga gets another cow to milk to death. People get fired. The remaining take a pay cut. They also work in more restricted conditions. The team will be broken apart with time.

This is how companies die.

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Goodbye some of the best hours spent in my life.