Farmville Loses 4 Million Players in April

[Lauren Admire]

Farmville Loses 4 Million Players in April

As Facebook makes changes to its previously game-friendly system, Zynga and other casual game developers are rapidly losing their loyal players.

Farmville users are dropping quicker than withering crops. In April, 4.4 million players said goodbye to their wilting sunflowers and haven't been back to plow since. Farmville isn't the only casual browser game to feel the pain: 18 other games, including Zynga's other hits Cafe World and Mafia Wars, lost a significant number of players as well.

Inside Social Games blames the removal of third-party notifications, a tool that allowed games to have continuous contact with their players, for the significant churn in the playerbase. Although Zynga CEO, Mark Pincus, claims the trend is only temporary, more players are sure to be lost when casual games are forced to make the shift to in-game gift requests only.

One has to wonder if the dwindling numbers is the reason behind Zynga's possible migration away from Facebook. [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/100437-Will-Zynga-Leave-Facebook]

Source: MTV Multiplayer [http://www.insidesocialgames.com/2010/05/03/top-25-facebook-games-for-may-2010/]

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[Jaranja]

Haaaaaah, sucks for them.

 

[Radeonx]

....Now who's going to water my crops!?

 

[Bretty]

I am not bothered by this 8)

Except to say that now I don't have to be spammed by this crap on Facebook.

 

[FloodOne]

Good. Maybe now Zynga has to actually develop something fun.

 

[maddawg IAJI]

I'm not really all that surprised. Zynga decided to take a gamble and hope their player-base would follow them out of Facebook. What they thought was that everyone went to Facebook for them, but they need to learn that people go to a social site to talk to friends and only use Farmville to kill time.

 

[Spaghetti]

And I was one of them
It is an intriguing development....

 

[Rainbowloid]

This brings me great joy.

 

[Da Joz]

Maybe people are trying to plant real stuff since the weather is getting nicer.

 

[Neosage]

Maybe people are realising that it's actually a shit game?

 

[rembrandtqeinstein]

Headline should read, "Spammer gets fewer responses when spam becomes harder to send, news at 11"

 

[Embz]

I think its more likely that the people playing them got bored. I certainly did, all that clicking!
Just a fast track to RSI imo

 

[rokkolpo]

....Now who's going to water my crops!?

must...resist...your mom joke AAAAAAGH

 

[Baldry]

Yey!
I say this cause I don't like Zynga as a game developer, cause I don't think they make games

Maybe people are trying to plant real stuff since the weather is getting nicer.

Haha

 

[uppitycracker]

I'm so glad they got rid of that crap. I use facebook for networking and promoting quite often, and that was seriously the most annoying thing I had to deal with. Good riddance.

 

[Cody211282]

Awesome I was wondering why I didn't have a few million updates a day on my friends farm, I am going to miss yelling at them about it.

 

[Krantos]

My wife quit because they started requiring you to give your email in order to continue playing.

 

[snuffler]

Zynga and other casual game developers are rapidly losing their loyal players.

Casual and loyal in the same sentence. You can't really be "occasionally faithful" can you? Well.. I guess you could. But that's such a long stretch. That's like calling MMORPGers RTSers because they tried playing DoTA.

 

[Lord Honk]

not to be an a*hole, but i'm pretty happy that this monopoly is finally losing some wind. i like casual games, i don't usually play them but i see their appeal and benefits, it's just zynga as a company that i loathe. their policies, their way of treating customers, the misleading and fraudulent ads... it's just anathema to anything i'd value in a "good" company.

 

[Th37thTrump3t]

I don't blame Zynga for migrating away from Facebook. Facebook is just a stupid little fad as was Myspace... Yeah, remember that relic of a social networking site? Remember how "cool" it was to have a Myspace? Well we all know how dead that site is now...