In March of last year, Zynga made one of its most high profile acquisitions in OMGPOP. The studio was responsible for Draw Something – one of the most popular mobile games of last year. Soon after, Zynga began to fall apart with share prices sliding, a number of high profile departures and its investment in Draw Something proving to be a disaster. Now Zynga is starting to cut what it can, and OMGPOP was among the casualties.
TechCrunch reports that OMGPOP has been shut down. There has been no official statement from Zynga, but the studio and its employees have taken to Twitter to announce that the studio is no more.
While this is the last day at @zynga for many @omgpop staff, we want to thank you for all love and awesomeness over the years!
— omgpop (@omgpop) June 3, 2013
I learned via Facebook I was laid off today and @omgpop office is closed. Thanks @zynga for again reminding me how not to operate a business
— Ali Nicolas (@ali_nicolas) June 3, 2013
The closure of OMGPOP comes right on the heels of yesterday’s announcement that Zynga would be laying off 520 of its employees. The company also shut down its New York, Dallas and LA offices.
It’s unknown if the closure of OMGPOP will affect the continued operation of Draw Something and its sequel Draw Something 2. The latter just launched on iOS in April, and an Android release was in the works. We’ve reached out to Zynga to find out if Draw Something will be affected by the closure and we’ll update if and when we hear back.
