Zynga loses two more senior execs, sources claim

Beleaguered cloud gaming firm Zynga has lost its vice president of studios, Bill Mooney, and vice president of marketing, Brian Birtwistle, Bloomberg has reported.

Birtwistle and Mooney, who was also general manager of the popular FarmVille game, are said to have left the company last week, around the same time the departure of CCO Mike Verdu was announced.

Zynga’s COO John Schappert also resigned at the beginning of August.

The departures, which have not been confirmed by Zynga, are the latest in a long line of bad news for the firm, which is the largest maker of social gaming apps on Facebook.

Shares in the business have slumped 71 per cent since its initial public offering in December 2011, which some consider to be the cause of its recent spate of high-level resignations. To add to its woes, the company is being sued by Electronic Arts, one of the largest games studios in the world, for alleged infringement of copyright over Zynga’s game The Ville.

However, Zynga and its associates are seeking to downplay the impact the departures will have on the firm.

In a statement to Bloomberg, company spokesperson Dani Dudeck, said: “Zynga’s voluntary attrition rate was around one per cent for the first four years, and our current attrition levels are not only below what we expected and modeled in our post-IPO planning, they continue to stay well below the industry average.”

Bing Gordon, a Zynga director, said it is not uncommon for some employees to move on at this stage in the life of a startup, claiming the same thing happened with Amazon and Apple.

“When you have a brilliant founder who wants to go the distance, not everybody stays with him,” said Gordon.

Zynga had not responded to a request for comment from Cloud Pro at the time of publication.