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Comment by wilfra | Hacker News Reader

I've been betting heavily on a turnaround, adding to my position in ZNGA each time it dipped below $3. Real money gambling I knew would be the savior and since they weren't burning much cash any more, they just had to wait for that to pass in the US.

Them canceling those plans - and Mattrick saying they are 'resetting' and expect volatility to continue, makes me lose my faith. I think I'm going to get out of the stock.

I don't know much about Mattrick so maybe he is a turnaround specialist and what he did at EA and Microsoft was great and he will save the company - but the business they are in is a loser. And they don't appear to be interested in a pivot.

Sad day. I now agree with the sentiment that Zynga is a dead company.

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I've been betting heavily on a turnaround, adding to my position in ZNGA each time it dipped below $3. Real money gambling I knew would be the savior and since they weren't burning much cash any more, they just had to wait for that to pass in the US.

Oh, irony.

The current user trend is still nothing but down. With user acquisition costs likely not getting any smaller, they aren't that far away from crossing the threshold of not having enough users to migrate to a new game, to spark it. At that point, it won't matter if their games are original, or re-badged copies of other games. They'll be in the same situation as your average (or below average) game dev startup, except with 10x (or 100x if they don't do more layoffs) the expenses.

Mattrick's track record with XBox One really should not inspire any confidence. But maybe that was just an unfortunate set of circumstances outside his control...

Mattrick's track record of the last 4 months vs. his 31 years of success in the game industry.

Why do you think they have any advantage in real money gambling? There are huge incumbents who have been operating overseas for many years.

Anyone who has played online poker on a rock-solid platform like PokerStars and then witnessed Zynga poker crash, mishandle network outages, skip players turns, auto-fold due to timeouts, etc. knows that they don't have a chance in hell to win over serious players with their tinker toy poker platform.

And when real money is involved EVERYONE becomes a serious player.

They partnered with bwin.party for RMG both for their poker and casino products.

Sorry for your loss. At least you understand the dynamics of the company you've invested in and took some (big) bets. Loses happen, companies tank.

I would probably hold the stock. Someone might buy them out for their talent, or whatever is left of it. I'm sure you're deep in the red, might not be the best idea to cash out.

I actually haven't lost money. I still have a 57% overall profit (at a price of $3.03).

It does suck though. Similar to how it probably feels to have your startup be acqhired. It's not a total loss - but it's definitely not what you were aiming for.

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