Zynga has been bleeding talent and executives over the past few months as the company struggles to stay relevant in a changing social games environment. It doesn’t look it’s stopping anytime soon either as Zynga has announced the departure of another executive.
The social games maker announced yesterday afternoon that CFO David Wehner is leaving the company for a finance position at Facebook. The split seems to be amicable with Zynga CEO Mark Pincus saying that Wehner “remains a good friend.”
As for the rest of the company, Pincus seems to have used Wehner’s departure as an excuse to shuffle around management at the social games maker. A number of execs were promoted or given new responsibilities yesterday. David Ko, previously chief mobile officer, is now the chief operations officer; Barry Cottle, previously executive vice president of business and corporate development, is now the chief revenue officer; and Steven Chiang, previously executive vice president of games, is now president of the games division. As for Wehner’s now vacant position, Mark Vranesh, previously chief accounting officer, has been moved to the position of CFO.
“Mark, David, Barry and Steve are rooted in our culture, committed to our future and part of the talented bench of leadership at Zynga,” said Pincus. “I’m confident we have the right team to deliver on our mission of connecting the world through games and position us for long-term growth.”
The most interesting result of this corporate shuffle is the promotion of Chiang to president of games. Before coming to Zynga, Chiang was senior vice president and group general manager at EA Sports. During his time there, he oversaw the development of Madden NFL. His experience in developing successful brands could help Zynga successfully reiterate on its existing brands while developing new IPs for mobile and social.
Zynga is not in a good place right now, and won’t be for a while. The company needs a hit, and it can’t lose any more executives. At the moment, it just looks like a bunch of people fleeing a sinking ship. The company needs to boost investor confidence, and more departures will only do the exact opposite.