Draw Something Loses 5 Million Users a Month After Zynga Purchase

[Shenglong]

Is this surprising? I've drawn an airport 7 times now.

Might seem like a trivial comment, but this is a classic case reflecting inability to service player wants. If they kept their word list updated and used a better algorithm to filter out repeat-words, they probably could have mitigated their user churn rate.

Yes, perhaps a larger word list was part of their monetization strategy - but Zynga should've realized that was a bad idea when it acquired the company. When users pay for something, there needs to be an instant sense of reward, and a noticeable lasting sense of reward. A larger word list doesn't really fall into either of those categories.

[landr0id]

This, and the number of games I had going on at one time were the main reasons for me uninstalling it. The game was fun, up until I had 30 games going on at once.

[antidaily]

I've had "Olympics" at least 7 times.

[philfreo]

Soon after the Zynga acquisition I opened the app and it asked me for a new/additional Facebook permission to have access to post on my wall, with no easy way to play my friends anymore if I said no. Could have something to do with it.

[andrewmu]

Yes! I really like the game but I nearly stopped playing because of that. It turns out you can accept it, then remove the App's wall posting privilege right away and it will still work. If that hadn't been the case, for me, Zynga would have paid for their aggressive strategy with the loss of a customer.

[ticks]

I agree, but I am not so bothered with that these days... you can set permissions within FB so that anything an app posts will only be seen by yourself.

[bostonvaulter2]

Makes me glad I didn't link it to my facebook at all.

[oellegaard]

Zynga completely abused the product. I started getting requests to give them more rights on facebook, which I solved my signing in with my email - then they started to send me push messages about weird things - I've heard they even asked for read/write sms rights on Android devices. I can only see it one way - Zynga might make cool games, but they are hardcore abusing regular people - also non-techinal people unlike us, that does not realize the outcome of granting these priveledges.

[RobAtticus]

The SMS permissions on Android are for an alternative payment system via SMS. It's in the app description on Google Play.

Edit: Looks like they've since removed the permission and text related to it. shrug

[nostromo]

"Halo 3 looses 5 Million Users 1 Month After Release" ... well of course it did, because most games get old pretty quickly.

To understand if Zynga overpaid, you'd need to know if they bought OMGPOP for a single hit title, or if they see them as a creative group with many hits to come, like Blizzard or Valve.

[tensor]

Their history does not indicate a repeat performance, so if they bought them for the reason they made a really big gamble.

[denniedarko]

What you're failing to consider here is that every user Halo 3 had paid approx. $60 up front to become a user in the first place. The problem with these free-mium games is that the average revenue per user is so much lower.

[andrewfelix]

Halo is an incredibly powerful brand in it's own right, with lore and characters that can be exploited in multiple markets. I don't think it's a fair comparison.

[underwater]

Zynga has had dozens of hit games. They obviously know about that user adoption follows and must have taken it into consideration.

[terenceponce]

To be fair, people get bored of mobile apps, in general, pretty easily. I remember playing Draw Something constantly for a few weeks then I eventually stopped playing because it got old pretty fast. I don't think Zynga is the reason why this is happening.

[jcampbell1]

Nothing in the title or article implies that the Zynga acquisition caused the decline.

[lnanek]

A friend who really loved the game tried to show it to me, but it kept having server problems. I wonder if that was just an isolated case or if it was frequent, in which case it could drive off users.

[buro9]

My girl and I stopped playing because of that. It went from playable to unplayable literally within a week or two.

It would lose our moves (returning to "Your move" when you'd submitted something hours before).

It would give strange errors "You're using this on more than once device"... erm, no I'm not.

And once it forgot who I was and showed no active games once I logged in again... effectively losing the games I was involved in from my account perspective, but my girl could still see the game and when she nudged it re-appeared on my phone.

And then there is just the non-responsiveness of the server. The start-up splash used to show for less than a second, but now it takes 5-10 seconds if it works at all.

For such a simple app and game it went from being a pleasant distraction to a chore very quickly. As such, our use has plummeted in turn.

[xianshou]

Every smartphone-equipped college student played Robot Unicorn Attack for a month at one point too. It's a pretty well-made game, hilarious, fairly demanding...and absolutely boring after you play it for the 50th time.

At this point, the speed of viral distribution represents both the blessing and the curse of social companies. You can take your exponential growth this month and extrapolate it over the next year, but that doesn't take into account the dozen newcomers that will catch the attention of the fickle 15M next month. When Metcalfe's law works on a scale of weeks instead of years, network effects become more transient and less valuable. Hopefully this helps teach the market that eyeballs alone should not justify an enormous purchase price.

[leftnode]

I stopped playing it solely because I wholly disagree with Zynga the company and how they operate.

[joering2]

i respect people like you alot. company's mission and how they behave before their product.

+1.

[mcarrano]

I noticed that about a week after Zynga purchased Draw Something, all of my friends stopped playing. I no longer play either.

[leviathan]

I also stopped for a while, but then I created a throw-away email address and used email signup instead of facebook. It's not convenient, but it lets you play the game again.

[yason]

What made your friends change?

[sparknlaunch12]

Seems odd that a company of that size and experience would stand back and allow such a massive drop. 5 million of 15 million in a month. Ouch.

This drop is " active " users. This is not the end of the world but suggests something bad happened.

[keithpeter]

"Whatever happens with the game now, they’ve made out like bandits."

Am I the only one who thought 'and jolly good luck to them'?

[EvilTerran]

That was my first thought, too; they've got a princely sum out of "the man", by creating a popular product through (no doubt) a lot of hard work, and without (it seems) wilfully screwing anyone over. Good for them!

[MrFoof]

In addition to the limited word list, poor repeat detection and Facebook integration, another thing that probably rubbed some folks the wrong way are the Sponsored Words.

Not everyone wants to draw Doritos, KFC or Coca-Cola.

[3piphany890]

zynga. think one million cold people in a dark room without hope for a light

[joering2]

can you imagine it to be a penny stock? they are right now where they were in january.

[eridius]

I have to wonder how much of this drop can be attributed directly to Zynga buying it (and their subsequent changes to the app). I know I stopped playing the moment Zynga announced the buyout.

[teamonkey]

I doubt that Zynga is even on the radar for most of those 5m people.

[Judson]

After the acquisition I started getting spam push notifications and promptly deleted the app. Not sure if this was a Zynga move, but it didn't make me want to continue playing the game.

[samstave]

I deleted the game the day I found out Zynga was buying them. I refuse to have anything to do with Zynga. I will never play their games, buy their stock or support them in general.

[bgilroy26]

I can't help thinking that number would be of use if you were trying to estimate the worldwide cardinality of techno-hipsters.

[hedgie]

aleph-null? what the fuck?

[nicolasd]

I think the reason for this is the principle of the game.. with the time it's boring..

[Inphidel]

I am tired of drawing the same things. I bet others are as well.

[torstesu]

Surely Zynga must have negotiated some earnout agreements or contigency payments in order to mitigate the risk?