Zynga's Mafia Wars 2 has failed to perform to expectations, according to internal sources, following an alarming drop in user numbers since its launch last month.
According to AppData, Mafia Wars 2 has lost over a million daily active users (DAUs) on Facebook since the beginning of the month. Sources told Business Week that executives are "second-guessing one another about what went wrong."
Three days after its launch on October 26, Mafia Wars 2 had 2.1 million DAUs. The following day it hit 2.3 million, but has been in near-constant decline ever since. Today the figure stands at just one million.
Lazard Capital Markets analyst Atul Bagga pinned the game's struggles on a more crowded social sector, one in which it is increasingly difficult for new launches to succeed. "The economics just aren't what they used to be," he said. "The cost of customer acquisition is going up, and that means there is going to be pressure on margins."
It's still early days, of course, but Zynga will rightly be disappointed with Mafia Wars 2's debut. It's the company's first-ever direct sequel, and was reportedly in development for a year by a team of 80 staff.
Earlier this month it was revealed that Zynga's profits in the three months to September 30 had fallen by 54 per cent, despite an 80 per cent increase in revenue; Mafia Wars 2, along with Adventure World, was supposed to show potential investors that the company still had value ahead of its IPO, which is expected to go through before the end of the year.
Source: Business Week
Comments
2Mafia wars 2 took 80 people a year to make? It looks like someone dude made it by himself in his basement on weekends for about a thousand dollars.
Good news, I despise Zynga after that selling user data fiasco.