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Zynga Buys NaturalMotion For $527M
- kenshiro_o 13y agoWell look what happened to OMGPop when Zynga bought them (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OMGPop http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OMGPop). Not convinced at all.
- calcsam 13y agoWhy is this on HN but not Zynga laying off 300 people?
- samstave 13y agoOh, thanks... Yes, it appears that this did happen.
- argonaut 13y agoWhat has this comment added to the discussion? Nothing, really. This is not reddit. Please don't post comments like this.
- BlackDeath3 13y agoAnd while we're at it, let's avoid posting low-quality comments on Reddit as well...
- darkstar999 13y agoIt is. In fact, it ranks higher than this post right now.
- calcsam 13y agoGood, when I posted it wasn't.
- cletus 13y agoThey buried the lead... Zynga has $527M?? Much like Sauron's tower in Mordor that collapsed once the foe was vanquished, you kinda expected Zynga to implode once Pincus was ousted.
- sheraz 13y agoHahahahah. You beat me to it. I had that exact same thought -- "Zynga has enough money or credit to do spend that much?"
- fragsworth 13y agoTheir IPO left them with something like $2 billion in cash.
- brianchu 13y agoPincus was not ousted. That's a really common misconception. Pincus still retains voting control over the company (much like Zuckerberg retains control over Facebook). Any changing of the guard that took place had to take place on his initiative. Now, there's no doubt that he felt pressure to leave from the stock market. But that's not an ouster.
- adventured 13y agoThey had $1.1 billion in cash at the end of last quarter, with no real debt. They have another $425m in long term investments, but I'm not sure what that consists of.
- jessedhillon 13y agoI came here expecting to see something like this at the top position. Apart from the standard rant about how completely unconstructive criticism -- in fact just outright insulting whole people and companies from the safety of anonymity -- seems to rule around here, there are a couple of other things I'd like to say. HN would greatly benefit from a regional filter -- as in, a filter of which comments I read, not who can post them. WTF do I care what some guy in Australia thinks of a very prominent Bay Area employer? He doesn't have friends and neighbors who work there, we do. Geographic community still means something, and much of the news on HN happens in our locale. (Honestly, I have a difficult time taking any developer who doesn't live here seriously, but that's a different discussion.) Second, up/down voting is conflated with "makes me feel good/not good" -- a better system would allow feedback to be more nuanced: agree/disagree, insightful, well-researched, funny etc. So we could have filters on discussions for what's actually insightful, not just what gives people the fuzzy comfort of knowing their preconceptions can remain safe and unchallenged for one more day, because the world has made low someone who has actual accomplishments (and mistakes)
- samstave 13y agoI was told from an employee that they were laying off a bunch of people today.... Did this not happen? Or it is overshadowed by the mass spend on this acquisition?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- knappe 13y agoThird paragraph of the article, last sentence. (There is also sad news today, with layoffs for 15 percent of the company’s workforce.)
- officemonkey 13y agoPump and dump: Buy up a new hit, throw out the old talent.
- samstave 13y agoThanks, I don't care for zynga, so I didn't even read the article.
- Karunamon 13y agoZynga's still around? I thought that particular titanic-of-the-internet had sunk already.
- devindotcom 13y agoThis strikes me as track behavior. They got a big winner by chance, and are back at the betting window putting the money into the next favored horse, hoping to come out ahead again. They'll do this until they lose big. Seriously, though, half a billion dollars?
- NDizzle 13y agoWhy would they spend half a billion dollars on a studio that only has one hit game?
- minimaxir 13y agoThey did exactly that for OMGPOP/Draw Something. Second time's the charm?
- Colliers 13y agoTheir middleware is very valuable. They have probably the best behavioral procedural animation system that is most notably used by Rockstar Games in GTAIV&V, Max Payne 3 and Red Dead Redemption.
- teamonkey 13y agoIt doesn't really fit with Zynga's portfolio though, does it?
- vecter 13y agoThat's the point, isn't it? Zynga wants to expand its mobile skillset.
- asadlionpk 13y agoregardless, the company is worth more than that IMO. I was very much impressed by the tech used in Clumsy Ninja.
- madaxe_again 13y agoThey're going to make porn games with it. Sounds crazy, but you heard it here first.
- kayoone 13y agoThe team is gold. They understand mobile gaming like noone else and actually had a row of hit games already. MyHorse, Backbreaker, CSR Racing, Clumsy Ninja
- drawkbox 13y agoNaturalMotion technology is excellent and this is a smart buy. Can't believe they sold. Quality products, above the bar tech, best physics on mobile probably. Check out Backbreaker and Clumsy Ninja.
- jason_slack 13y agoWow, I didn't even realize they had 527M to spend on anything, yet they are closing studios, canceling games, laying off good people...
- adventured 13y agoThey're trying to stop the bleed on their cash, recognizing they're going to have to essentially build an entirely new company (and likely understanding the time and expense involved).
- jason_slack 13y agoBut can't they re-purpose the existing studios, employees and have it cost way less than $527 million? I mean is $527 million worth saving the time of re-purposing the studios and employees? I just dont know. I guess to them it is...
- teej 13y agoNot surprising that they put themselves up for sale - Clumsy Ninja never hit top 10 grossing. That was their ticket to the Billionaires Club and they missed the mark. Still a great outcome for the NaturalMotion guys. Welcome to the Borg.
- kunaalarya 13y agoClumsy Ninja was never meant to make a ton of money. It was to show off their tech - they also sell highly valuable middleware for games.
- kayoone 13y agoI know Torsten from a european startup accelerator where he was a mentor for gaming...super smart guy, deeply understands mobile gaming, a great talker and a hacker at heart. Congrats :)
- elwell 13y agoI feel like NaturalMotion has been around for a long time. I remember playing with some of their ragdoll physics simluations at least 7 years ago.
- alexmr 13y agoThey've been around for a while. Even before getting into mobile they did high end 3D platform stuff for console games like grand theft auto.
- madaxe_again 13y agoThey have indeed - long enough that their angel round was almost derailed by 9/11.
- DigitalSea 13y agoThis is impressive. I think the perception is Zynga is this poor little company that is on its last legs when in reality they are still making money and fresh off the press of the IPO they've still got a bit of money to play with and this is a smart play if I do say so myself. It'll be interesting to see if NaturalMotion is kept as a separate entity to that of Zynga or it is merged with the current company. The 15% Zynga staff cull that just happened I guess is a sign that they're going to be using their new-found employee purchases over at NaturalMotion in place of the 15% they just laid off. Whether or not this purchase saves Zynga remains to be seen. CSR Racing is a fantastic game, really fantastic and well played. I've been playing it for a while now on the train to work, the mechanics and graphics are stellar for a mobile game.
- anxman 13y agoI agree. The NaturalMotion portfolio has lots of really great IP in it. Clumsy Ninja is such a charming character and CSR performs well critically and financially. In my opinion, take a page from the Arthur Anderson / Phillip Morris playbook and rename the entire company. It will make recruiting easier for them and probably please investors by shedding some of Zynga's negative brand halo.
- ergoproxy 13y agoDid Zynga lay off 15% of its workforce to recoup the $527M investment in NaturalMotion? See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7153709 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7153709 That article says they'll take a $17M charge this year on the lay off and then save about $33M/year. Discounted at 6% per annum that works out to $533M. See http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=-17+%2B+Sum%5B33%2F1.06%5En%2C%7Bn%2C1%2Cinf%7D%5D http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=-17+%2B+Sum%5B33%2F1.06... This article says Zynga has "about $1.2 billion in cash and marketable securities on hand." But a dailyfinance article suggests companies aren't really as cash rich as they seem; their money is locked up in offshore tax havens; they can't repatriate it without paying tax on it: http://www.dailyfinance.com/2011/07/25/why-are-rich-companies-laying-off-poor-workers/ http://www.dailyfinance.com/2011/07/25/why-are-rich-companie...