Anonymous Warns Zynga Will Burn

[Karloff]

Anonymous Warns Zynga Will Burn

Anonymous says it's targeting Zynga because the social game maker is outsourcing jobs to India.

When Zynga announced it was going to downsize 150 employees [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/120328-Zynga-Suffers-52-7-Million-Net-Loss-in-Third-Quarter-2012] after a pretty miserable third financial quarter, it can't have anticipated response from Anonymous, the hacktivist collective. Anonymous has threatened retribution against the social game maker, to take place on November 5th, aka Guy Fawkes or Bonfire Night.

Anonymous believes that the 150 job losses Zynga has announced so far are the tip of the iceberg. Thousands of jobs, Anonymous claims, are at risk; "it will also come to end the US game market as we know it," according to Anonymous, "as all this jobs will be replaced in other more convenient financial countries." "More convenient" means Bangalore, India, where Zynga already has a subsidiary.

Anonymous has threatened to release all the confidential Zynga documents [http://anonnews.org/forum/post/9195/] in its possession that, it claims, proves Zynga intends to chop US jobs and move development to India. Anonymous has also threatened to release all the games it has taken from Zynga's servers, for free, if Zynga doesn't put an immediate halt to its plan.

"With a billion dollars cash sitting in a bank," Anonymous states, "we do believe that such actions [like Zynga's alleged plan] are an insult to the population and the behaviour of corporations like Zynga must change."

Assuming for a moment that Anonymous' allegations are correct, and Zynga did intend to shut down US development as part of a plan to move those jobs to cheaper locations, it's difficult to see what Anonymous will actually achieve by this action. Zynga has had nothing but bad financial news ever since its IPO, and its acquisition of Draw Something creator OMGPOP was an unmitigated disaster. Reducing labor costs is a reasonable way for a company hemorrhaging money to decrease expenses and, if that means India, Zynga may prefer to take an Anonymous hit in the short term in the hope of ensuring its long term survival.

Source: Eurogamer [http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-10-29-anonymous-threatens-to-burn-zynga-on-guy-fawkes-day]


Permalink

 

[Jopoho]

...India has withdrawn from the Anonymous project.

Seriously though, since when did freedom of speech and securing a handful of American jobs in a dying business coincide? I have no love for Zynga, but I don't get kicking somebody when they are down, and Lord knows they are down.

 

[MrPeanut]

...Why does the Escapist report on these threats?

I just cannot understand.

 

[Falterfire]

Uh... Is Anonymous still an actually credible threat or not? I can't tell anymore. They seem to put out threats way more often than they actually follow through. I'm thinking the entire reason for this is so they can have SOMETHING to target on the 5th of November to try to keep the mystique alive.

 

[Krantos]

Pointless threats are Pointless?

Seriously, Zynga isn't likely to survive until this time next year. Give it up already.

Plus, is it just me or has Anon kind of reimagined themselves as the internet Lone Rangers. Seems a tad outside their normal ballywack is all.

 

[Bob_F_It]

So members of Anonymous think that damaging Zynga's business will stop the need to release employees?
They just make noise and achieve nothing.

 

[Fappy]

This is asinine. Anon realizes that impeding their business will only lead to more lost jobs, right?

 

[Baresark]

This is such a stupid cause. Zynga is going down. All American jobs will be lost, regardless of what Anonymous is going to do. If they were smart, they would just release these so called documents and let the chips fall where they will. Or better yet, don't waste our time with it.

 

[Kross]

Uh... Is Anonymous still an actually credible threat or not? I can't tell anymore. They seem to put out threats way more often than they actually follow through.

Well, if anonymous is who they claim to be, then a threat can be anything from a small group of people to a single bored script kiddie. These threats have been around since the dawn of the Internet, but with social media these days they have a bit more of a stage then a defaced website saying "D34thstr1ke Krew wuz here - FREE KEVIN"

 

[Zombie_Moogle]

Uh... Is Anonymous still an actually credible threat or not? I can't tell anymore. They seem to put out threats way more often than they actually follow through. I'm thinking the entire reason for this is so they can have SOMETHING to target on the 5th of November to try to keep the mystique alive.

Well, it depends; Anonymous is an entirely decentralized collective. Pretty much anyone can claim that Anonymous is planning something or making a statement. Whether they are capable of or even intend to follow through varies wholly on the people making the claim. Seeing as this is pretty far off from Anon's usual M.O., I'd say it's probably not a widely adopted effort among them

 

[Radoh]

No, Anon is not attacking Zynga because it's outsourcing jobs to India, it's attacking Zynga because it is not in a real position to do anything about it, what with catching a severe case of Sinking Ship Syndrome.

 

[Legion]

...Why does the Escapist report on these threats?

I just cannot understand.

If these threats ever ended up getting carried out and verified then I'd understand, but it seems that they never do. The people whose documents they claim to have say "No they don't" and then it gets forgotten about.

Which makes them pretty unimportant.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

Oh, Anon how far you have fallen... Well, not really. I mean, they weren't exactly these great champions of justice before and their recent attempts at lashing out against everyone and everything that they somehow have a grudge against is either very funny or very sad. Whatever the case is, I enjoy watching them confirm the prejudice that Anon really just are a bunch of whiny kids who seem to have a hard time adjusting to the fact that the world give exactly zero amount of attention to what they are doing or think.

 

[Andy Shandy]

"D34thstr1ke Krew wuz here - FREE KEVIN"

Thanks Kross, I immediately felt brain cells dying trying to read that =P

Anyway, at the moment it's just a threat, let's see what happens on the 5th. And no offence to the workers there, but it couldn't happen to a nicer company (well some would say EA) if it does happen.

 

[CheckD3]

I think not all Anon planners are masters of the "I'm afraid of them" plans, but I can possibly see where they're coming. If people can play free games, and get upset at Zynga for trying to kill American jobs...you'd stop playing them, so they'd close. However, then you're just putting Americans and Indians out of jobs...so it's kinda moot on that point I guess

I preferred it when Anon was attacking the big business, and the corporations, who are sitting in their corporation buildings...being all corporationy

 

[bl4ckh4wk64]

Well considering how anonymous now basically consists of a bunch of children who THINK they know how computers works, I'd absolutely love to see them attempt this.

 

[gigastar]

One thing about Anon attacks that i dont get.

In a world where information spreads faster than light, why would you put up a news post with your intentions alerting all concerned parties that youre going to attack them?

Anyway if Anon can walk the walk this time, theyll only put a developer already swirling the drain out of its misery.

If its just some script kiddie talking out of thier ass again, then Anon has another black mark on its name, and Zynga goes down in flames anyway.

I call that a win-win.

 

[Sylveria]

Glad to see Adam is in so much favor of outsourcing when jobs in the US are already so plentiful. Guess we know who he's voting for next month. I'm sure there's some Indians who would be happy to do his job to.

 

[Formica Archonis]

And Anonymous proceeds on the downhill slide from Endboss of the Internet to the mook that gets killed by its own shot in a badly-coded NES game.