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When a company acquires another and then shuts it down, the reasoning usually has something to do with intellectual properties or acqui-hiring the employees.

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Except in this case, they laid everyone off. Also, Zynga doesn't seem all that interested in acquiring IP. I imagine this was just a fuck up on their part.

They're keeping Draw Something

If they are, that really seems like a nasty move. Buy a company, then shut down all their products and services, fire all of them, then keep all of their IP and ensure they can't use it again? I suppose it's not exactly theft, since they got paid something up front, but it's still unfortunate.

They didn't expect Draw Something to drop off so much faster than their usual games.

Probably didn't understand that Draw Something isn't even a game when you think about it, so didn't really have a competitive angle and became tiresome quickly.

Or buying the customer base, if they think the customers can be moved to their platform.

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