Inside Zynga: The Chair-Throwing CEO, the Burnt Posters, and What Really Happened Behind the $12 Billion Deal

A former Zynga employee shares what it was actually like inside the company—from Pincus’s nephew feedback emails to the night OMGPOP celebrated by burning Zynga posters.

Plus: The stories, quotes, and insights that didn’t make it into the Zynga episode.

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Today I released my investigation into how Mark Pincus built FarmVille and turned Zynga into a $12 billion gaming empire…by doing “every horrible thing in the book.”

The video covered the public story: the scam ads, the copycat games, the ruthless tactics, the $12.7 billion Take-Two acquisition.

But there’s always more to the story.

This is the cutting room floor—the stories, details, and insights that didn’t fit the final video. Plus something extra: an exclusive insider account from someone who worked at Zynga right during these tumultous times.

They were there when OMGPOP got bought and shut down. They saw Pincus’s management style firsthand. They lived through the Mattrick era, the “Zynga old blood,” and the transition to Take-Two.

Here’s what I learned, both from what didn’t make it into the video, and from someone who lived it.

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(FROM INSIDE)

What Happened to OMGPOP

Zynga bought Draw Something maker OMGPOP for $180 million in 2012—right when the game was white-hot. The momentum died almost immediately after the acquisition. And then Zynga shut down the entire company just a few years later.

I touched on this in the video, but didn’t dive deep. The insider who worked on Draw Something 2 with the NY studio fills in the blanks:

They remember hearing about the acquisition in water cooler chats—around $40 million, or so people thought. Actually, it was $180 million, but that’s how opaque these decisions were.

The night before Draw Something 2 launched, the head of the OMGPop/NY studio was let go. “I think it was because upper management didn’t like the guy for whatever reason,” the insider said.

Launch day, and they fire the studio head the night before. That’s how Zynga treated acquired studios.

The NY studio didn’t hide their feelings about Zynga San Francisco HQ. During work trips, they’d take the Toronto team to recruiting mixers for free drinks—”since at the time, the NY crew kind of already knew their studio was on the chopping block.”

When the studio finally shut down? “They allegedly celebrated by ripping up and burning all the Zynga related stuff like posters and promotional material.”

That’s how much they hated working there.

This acquisition was Zynga trying to buy their way out of the mobile pivot problem. They saw Draw Something’s viral success and thought throwing $180M at it would solve everything. Classic Pincus move—fast, expensive, short-sighted.

Inside Pincus’s Management Style

The insider’s account reveals what Pincus was actually like as a manager and it’s not pretty.