Zynga Seeking to Sell San Francisco Headquarters Building
Zynga, the world's No. 1 provider of free-to-play poker, put its San Francisco headquarters building up for sale as it continues to downsize in the wake of a failed effort to expand into real-money gaming. The news was reported by Martyn Hannah of eGR North America — article is behind a paywall.
The popular social gaming company, which leads second-place PokerStars by more than a 2-1 ratio in play money customers according to PokerScout, launched real-money online poker in the United Kingdom in 2013 in an attempt to expand from its immensely popular free games. The product was launched as a skin in the PartyGaming network.
"Our long-term vision is to offer our players the next generation of real-money games on multiple platforms in regulated markets worldwide," Zynga CEO Barry Cottle wrote on the Zynga Plus Poker blog at the time.
That vision never really came to fruition, despite Zynga's efforts to tap into its network of social gaming players by fully integrating a portal to the real-money online games through social media platform Facebook in 2014. The company discontinued its real-money offerings in the U.K. in early 2015.
In the wake of the failed venture into the real-money market, Zynga is attempting to get back to its roots as a free-play giant while transitioning to a more mobile-focused model, Hannah reported. As part of its narrower focus, its been slashing jobs and generally downsizing, and the San Francisco sale is a continuation of that plan.
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