> Addiction's downside is that gains are subjected to the law of diminishing returns.

100% nailed it. They stopped being able to develop hits that could keep up with the diminishing returns they were seeing on their old games.

I always thought that had Zynga just focused on keeping their slot machines shiny, accessible and easy to use, they wouldnt be in this mess. Instead they decided to reinvent the slot machine every year or so. It worked for a while but there's only so much you can do before you have to start outright copying. In other words, fight diminishing returns by continually improving the game rather than continually building new games.