Zynga Slowly Becoming EA, Buys Up Wild Needle

You may have heard about the fallout over OMGPOP when multi-billion dollar corporation Zynga bought them out for their uber-popular casual-social title, Draw Something. Well, Zynga is not done, after their IPO the company has been rampaging for new acquisitions and a portfolio agenda that's quickly starting to resemble yet another giant mega-corporation who aspires to acquire and dominate.

Recently, it was leaked that Zynga has acquired another small start-up group to add to their growing cache of small companies who produce indie-style casual games. The latest is called Wild Needle, and it's a small studio who focuses on making games for girls.

According to Tech Crunch Zynga wasn't so much after Wild Needle's properties (i.e., Shoptown Hero) but rather the developer's ambitions and talents. The aforementioned casual title is a typical social simulator and hasn't really turned noteworthy numbers. However, according to Tech Crunch it's starting to look like the company is quickly buying up new companies in hopes of hitting it big (again) back when they were rolling in dough with titles like Farmville and Mafia Wars. The idea is to purchase fresh talent and have them churn out some factory-style hits for long-term financial gain.

What's more is that according to VentureBeat, they speculate that the purchase of Wild Needle was far less turgid than the acquisition of OMGPOP which rifled around the $180 million margin, and instead it's approximated that Wild Needle's acquisition was around $3.8 million. Technically that's not a bad buyout figure (for Zynga, anyways) and dips far less into the company's capital than their OMGPOP purchase.

RipTen reports, however, that these purchases are becoming necessary for Zynga to try to straighten out their dropping stock price, which has been diving steadily...quite similar to EA. In fact, it's reported that the price has gone from an initial $9.50 and it's dropped down to $8.56 as of the publishing of this article.

Zynga's current trend reminds me of the budding Electronic Arts that started dominating during the early-mid 2000s, which eventually led them to become the Worst Company In America.