Don Mattrick Resigns As Zynga CEO, Founder Mark Pincus Back In Role
Zynga is going through some changes again. Announced via a press release Wednesday, Don Mattrick has resigned his position as CEO of the online game company. Founder Mark Pincus has stepped back into the CEO role, the position he vacated for Mattrick in 2013. Mattrick’s resignation from Zynga is effective immediately.
The Facebook game juggernaut has struggled to keep up with mobile game companies such as King and SuperCell. Don Mattrick was brought on in July of 2013 to help bring Zynga back into the financial heyday it experienced before casual gamers moved from browser-based games to mobile and tablet games.
Unfortunately for Mattrick and Zynga, that never quite panned out.
According to VentureBeat, the best Mattrick can claim is that profits are no longer taking a nosedive, but are rather leveling out. Other analysts have been more critical, such as Medium’s Ben Schaechter, recommending that Mattrick forgo his second year of shares or even that he be fired before July.
Don Mattrick is a 30-year veteran of the gaming industry. Before taking over Zynga, Mattrick worked at Electronic Arts and was the head of Xbox during the Xbox One launch in 2013. Mattrick took a lot of heat from Xbox fans over how the Microsoft console was being marketed. Mattrick is infamous in gaming circles for talking condescendingly to consumers, especially when it came to the Xbox One’s always online feature. In an interview with Geoff Keighly, as reported by Engadget, he told prospective customers of the next-gen console that if they didn’t like the feature, Microsoft had a product for them. “It’s called Xbox 360.”
Mattrick left for Zynga relatively soon after the E3 showcase of the Xbox One and promised to bring the browser game giant back to prominence. However, those results never materialized, so it seems Pincus is stepping back into his role as chief executive officer of the company he founded. Pincus is placing his company’s focus back on upcoming mobile titles Dawn of Titans, Empires and Allies, and FarmVille: Harvest Swap.
Zynga will hold its first conference call post-Mattrick on May 7, where the mobile company will release its first quarter earnings reports. Mattrick reports that he will return to Canada and pursue new ventures there, closing this chapter in his career.
How Zynga progresses as a company is now in the hands of the man who helped bring it into prominence in the first place. Hopefully, for Zynga’s sake, he can rekindle the fire that had us all harvesting virtual farms daily all over again.
[Images via Zynga]
