Zynga’s FarmVille was a social network game that required participants to maintain a virtual farm. Users might participate in a range of tasks such as caring for farm animals and plants or building and decorating structures.
The game revolved around users earning cash by growing and harvesting crops and plants. Each harvest advances the player to the next level. Produce harvesting can take anywhere from a few hours to many days.
Animals also provide a return on investment. Chickens, for example, will provide you with eggs, whilst cows will provide you with milk. Seeds, which are used to develop plants and animals, can be obtained in a number of ways. Users may participate in challenges, get presents from other players, or just buy virtual coins with real money.
FarmVille’s social component stemmed from the fact that the game was mostly played on Facebook (an iPhone app existed for a short period as well). The social network allowed players to submit gift requests to one another.
FarmVille, which used Adobe Flash technology, could be accessible through Facebook, Microsoft’s MSN Games, Yahoo Games, or by downloading its iOS app.
The game was ultimately shut down in December 2020 after being played by hundreds of millions of people. How it came to be, who is behind it, and what ultimately led to its closure will be covered in the next few chapters.
FarmVille Roots and why did it shut down?
FarmVille was developed by Zynga, a game development studio started in April 2007 by Mark Pincus, Justin Waldron, Eric Schiermeyer, Michael Luxton, and Steve Schoettler. Pincus, who had previously founded many firms, was the inspiration for Zynga. He co-founded Support.com in 1997 and guided it to an IPO in July 2000.
He and Reid Hoffman (founder of LinkedIn and early employee of PayPal) worked on Tribe.net, a social network that they eventually sold to Cisco Systems, for four years prior to founding Zynga. Meanwhile, Pincus and Hoffman honed their investing skills. For example, they each invested $40,000 in Facebook in 2004, providing them immediate access to Zuckerberg’s ideas.
One of those ambitions, which they were most certainly aware of, was the May 2007 launch of the Facebook Platform, which allowed third-party developers to build applications on top of the social network.
As a result of that news, Pincus decided to establish a company solely dedicated to developing games for Facebook. In order to get it started, they raised a tiny seed round from Reid Hoffman in January 2007. After launching the firm in April, they changed its name to Zynga in July to honour Pincus’ American bulldog Zinga.
That same month, the team released Zynga Poker, its first Facebook game. The poker game, as well as later products such as Mafia Wars, catapulted Zynga to over 40 million monthly users by April 2009, making it the most popular game producer on Facebook.
A month later, in May, it made its first acquisition, acquiring the gaming business MyMiniLife, whose four developers would be tasked with developing a communal farm game. That game was highly influenced by games like Happy Farm and Farm Town, which had amassed millions of followers on social media.
Zynga ultimately debuted FarmVille on June 19th, 2009, at 8 p.m. on both Facebook and Myspace, after only six weeks of development.
A week after its release, FarmVille has amassed over one million participants. Zynga raised an additional $29 million to promote the game at the end of July, after already raising over $15 million.
FarmVille would spread like wildfire in the coming weeks. By the end of August, the game had attracted over 11 million players — on a daily basis (and over 30 million every month). Furthermore, Zynga’s games would be played by around 93 million individuals per month, which equated to one-third of Facebook’s overall userbase at the time.
Unfortunately, not everything always went as planned. Zynga monetized FarmVille in part by selling banner adverts within the game. However, not all of those advertisements were legal.
More specifically, the firm showed what are known as lead generation scams, such as links to surveys. Tattoo Media, for example, was responsible for displaying the advertisements. This resulted in hundreds of fraudulent credit card purchases, causing many law firms to consider bringing class-action claims.
After a significant public response, which included Facebook temporarily removing FarmVille and renaming it ScamVille, Zynga deleted the adverts from FarmVille, thus eliminating nearly a third of its income overnight.
Fortunately, this had no effect on FarmVille’s popularity. The game grew so successful that Zynga proceeded to release spin-offs including FishVille, PetVille, CityVille, and others. It also created FarmVille.com on November 23rd, 2009, to allow players to play the game outside of Facebook and Myspace — essentially decreasing its reliance on social networks.
Zynga raised another $180 million at the end of the year to promote FarmVille and its other games. One of the first steps was the February 2010 introduction of FarmVille on Microsoft’s MSN Games.
FarmVille’s popularity was on full show over Valentine’s Day, when its gamers purchased over 500 million virtual presents for other users in less than 48 hours. They spent a total of 1.7 billion dollars on presents over the next ten days. By the end of February, about 80 million players were playing the game on a monthly basis.
Zynga was also confronted with a new battleground. The firm has a long-running conflict with Facebook regarding how Facebook Credits were enforced. Furthermore, Facebook wanted Zynga to agree to an arrangement in which its games would be solely available on the platform (which is why Zynga launched its own website and entered a partnership with MSN).
Fortunately, a few weeks later (in May 2010), the two agreed to a five-year agreement that would safeguard Zynga’s independence. Days later, it secured a multimillion-dollar agreement with 7-Eleven to sell FarmVille-branded products, such as mugs, at its more than 7,000 locations. The company then announced a collaboration with Yahoo to offer its games on the internet giant’s platform.
Zynga continues its expansion by releasing a FarmVille app for the iPhone in June. However, due to portability limitations, the game only featured a subset of the features found in the original Facebook title. Zynga got another $150 million from SoftBank in the same month.
Unfortunately, FarmVille had to deal with some more serious setbacks as well. After hundreds of users expressed their displeasure with the intrusive alerts, Facebook drastically reduced the frequency with which they would be displayed in late 2010.
As a result, Zynga released an iPad version for FarmVille in October. It also announced a collaboration with McDonald’s to bring the fast-food company’s meals to the game. Another agreement with American Express, allowing players to earn incentives, as well as an official debut in Japan, finished out a very successful 2010.
That, however, was about to change. FarmVille was eclipsed in early 2011 by CityVille, which Zynga had released only a few weeks before. Walker Digital, a firm created by Priceline.com co-founder Jay Walker, also sued Zynga, Facebook, and Activation Blizzard for patent infringement.
Fortunately, investors were undaunted and put $490 million into Zynga in February, valuing the company at $8.6 billion. Regardless, Zynga was compelled to constantly create new games since user interest in its established titles, such as CityVille and FarmVille, was dwindling (as cities and farms simply became too large and cumbersome to manage).
Despite the drop in interest, over 44 million individuals were still actively playing the game each month. It continues to keep gamers captivated with the help of Lady Gaga, who unveiled bits of her new album in the game.
Meanwhile, Zynga filed to go public in July, but the IPO was eventually postponed owing to unfavourable market circumstances. Despite its dwindling user base, FarmVille contributed for about 30% of Zynga’s income, according to the filing.
FarmVille, like Angry Birds later on, was rumoured to be produced into a movie in October. A month later, Zynga announced a partnership with Best Buy to offer FarmVille-themed toys. Finally, Zynga was able to IPO in December, raising another $1 billion in the process.
As a public firm, Zynga was able to speed its deal-making activities. It collaborated with Hasbro, Frito-Lay, and Walmart in early 2012 to manufacture toys and sell in-game goodies, respectively.
Decline begins
Unfortunately, the game’s popularity began to wane. Zynga removed FarmVille’s iOS version in August 2012 after it failed to combine it with the browser-based game. Meanwhile, Zynga’s stock has fallen by more than 40% since its IPO due to large quarterly losses.
Furthermore, as a result of Facebook’s notification adjustments, participation in its “Ville” games fell by more than a third.
Fortunately, FarmVille continued to carry the company in terms of revenue, particularly the so-called whales, who contributed the majority of the profits earned. That was much the more shocking given that FarmVille barely had a fraction of its daily active user peak.
Zynga chose to release FarmVille 2 in September 2012 in order to maintain user interest. Four weeks after its release, the game had over 15 million monthly active players. Unfortunately, Zynga was still obliged to lay off 5% of its workers and close operations in Japan and the United Kingdom in order to save money.
By January 2013, FarmVille 2 had exceeded its predecessor, with around 50 million monthly active users. Meanwhile, the original had reached $1 billion in total player bookings by February.
In the summer of 2013, facing ongoing financial difficulties, co-founder Pincus chose to stand down as CEO. Don Mattrick, a long-serving Microsoft executive, took his post.
Despite a steady decline in user numbers, FarmVille participants remained extremely engaged. Throughout the game’s run, they continued to generate funds for worthy organisations. For example, in December 2013, players raised $1 million for charity in 20 days to alleviate famine.
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In the coming year, Zynga introduced another mobile game dubbed FarmVille 2: Country Escape, which represented a departure from the firm’s focus on Facebook. In fact, it was solely available on mobile to decrease its reliance on Facebook’s social graph.
The original FarmVille game’s user base continues to dwindle throughout the years. Instead, Zynga released spin-offs such as a FarmVille-themed version of Candy Crush, which became the most popular Facebook game by 2015.
Meanwhile, following a string of unsuccessful investments, CEO Mattrick was fired, only to be replaced by co-founder Pincus, who held the role until February 2017. Frank Gibeau, a former executive of Electronic Arts, takes over and ushers in a new and more successful era.
Zynga said in June 2019, on the tenth anniversary of FarmVille, that its games have been downloaded onto over 700 million devices. That same month, FarmVille 3, built by Zynga’s Helsinki studio, was soft-launched.
A little more than a year later, in September 2020, Zynga announced that the original FarmVille will be discontinued at the end of the year. It was ultimately put to rest on December 31st, 2020, after more than eleven years.
FarmVille 3, its successor, was released to the public eleven months later, in November 2021. After successfully turning back its company, Zynga was sold to Grand Theft Auto creator Take-Two Interactive in January 2022 for $11.04 billion.
Why Was FarmVille Shut Down?
FarmVille was discontinued on December 31, 2020, due to Adobe’s decision to phase out its Flash technology.
As previously noted, the vast majority of gamers gained access to the game through Facebook, which had built its gaming environment around Flash.
Adobe chose to discontinue its Flash programme because competing open-source standards, such as HTML 5 and CSS 3, were far more efficient at operating mobile and online apps.
This is arguably best demonstrated by Zynga’s failure to move over many of the elements that made its Facebook game so successful. As a result, the iOS app was discontinued in August 2012.
Furthermore, Flash was a headache in terms of security, necessitating Adobe’s constant patching of flaws in its technology.
As a result, an increasing number of developers abandoned the technology, which was nevertheless the dominant standard for running online applications until the early 2010s.
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