Zynga Buys Omgpop - Draw Somethings Developer
Zynga announced that it has acquired New York-based social game developer OMGPOP
. Four weeks ago, only people who follow and play social games pretty closely had heard of New-York-based developer OMGPOP. Today, over 35 million people have downloaded the company's asynchronous art-guessing game Draw Something. In what is perhaps the most Drawsome deal in Internet history, and the deal was announced on a conference call with the press on Wednesday afternoon, Zynga paid $180 million for OMGPOP, plus $30 million to retain OMGPOP's employees.OMGPOP was founded in 2006, creating 35 other social games first on its own social network and then on Facebook and mobile platforms. But today's sale seems designed to strike while the company is incredibly hot with Draw Something's meteoric success - the game generated 1 billion drawings across 84 languages in the last week, a peak of 3,000 per second. OMGPOP will remain headquartered in New York and report to David Ko, chief mobile officer of Zynga. As part of Zynga, the 40-person team at OMGPOP will focus on building new mobile games and continuing to develop its existing titles. The OMGPOP team has created a game that's fun, expressive and engenders real social interaction," said Zynga CEO Mark Pincus. "Draw Something has captured the imagination of millions of people around the world. We love the way they've worked playful and relevant culture into their games from Devo to Daft Punk, from Lin to Beckham.
Six weeks ago, OMGPOP launched its runaway hit Draw Something, a Pictionary-like game for iPhones and Android devices. The game, which is available for free or $0.99 for the version without ads, currently sits atop the App Store's top paid, top free, and top grossing lists. In the last week, more than 1 billion drawings have been created in the app. Draw Something's quick rise is a bit hard to decipher, considering that countless other Pictionary-style games have failed to catch fire on iOS and Facebook. It could be that Draw Something's simplicity, along with a design that allows for play sessions as short as a minute or two, appeals to players that don't have time to get fully absorbed in social games. Or maybe it just illustrates the exponential marketing power of having seemingly your all friends stumble on to a single multiplayer game all at once.
The big draw for Zynga, however, was no doubt Draw Something, which OMGPOP CEO Dan Porter says won't change much after the acquisition: "Zynga offered us a chance to focus on Draw Something - they know the power of the game and they planned with us how to let it keep rolling in the same fun, irreverent, social way that it has been. That was really important to us, Porter, who will also become vice president and general manager of Zynga with the deal, said in a statement. The company also said it currently has "no plans" to change the game's name to something like Draw With Friends, to match fellow Zynga mobile hit Words With Friends.
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