By Matthew Lynley
Zynga's stock is down more than 6% this morning after the company disclosed late yesterday that it and Facebook are changing the rules of their relationship.
Zynga disclosed that the two companies amended the terms of their agreement so Zynga can host its Web games outside of Facebook. The new pact also opens the door to Facebook producing its own games.
The former gives Zynga some more flexibility, while the latter seems unlikely — for the same reasons Facebook seems unlikely to buy Zynga. The art for Facebook is to extract as much value from partners on its platform and not play favorites, and not pollute its very valuable and and relatively neutral platform for developers.
Facebook even says, “We’re not in the business of building games and we have no plans to do so,” according to the WSJ.
Here are the rest of the changes, according to the article:
Zynga will no longer be required to display Facebook ads on its game pages or use Facebook “credits” as its payments system. The game maker will also no longer have to host its Web games exclusively on the Facebook platform and can now seek other partners and offer games on its own portal, Zynga.com, without linking users to the Facebook platform.
Zynga also agreed not to promote Zynga.com on Facebook, which it has done in the past, or to use data from Facebook players to help it promote its portal.
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