Unbiased opinion: Zynga Slingo is an awesome game. It earned five stars in Gamezebo’s review and ate up countless hours of my own personal free time. But great games don’t always equal great business, and with the recent $15.6m acquisition of the Slingo brand by RealNetworks, we were left wondering what the future of Zynga Slingo might be.
Unbiased opinion: Zynga Slingo is an awesome game. It earned five stars in Gamezebo’s review and ate up countless hours of my own personal free time. But great games don’t always equal great business, and with the recent $15.6m acquisition of the Slingo brand by RealNetworks, we were left wondering what the future of Zynga Slingo might be.
As it turns out, not so good.
“The publishing agreement between Slingo and Zynga is coming to an end in August,” GameHouse Studios Vice President Ken Murphy told Gamezebo. “Our team is already at work on new versions of Slingo for mobile and social platforms… We have begun in-house development on several new mobile/social Slingo games that we look forward to bringing to players.”
We’ve attempted to reach Zynga for comment, but received no reply.
Having said that, their side of the story doesn’t seem hard to speculate. According to AppData the game’s MAU doesn’t even crack the Top 100 on Facebook. What’s more, it’s barely in Zynga’s own Top 10, ranking in at a lowly #9. Combine that with the company’s push towards mobile, new CEO Don Mattrick’s fresh plans, and their move away from casino games, and it seems as though losing Zynga Slingo may not be that big of a sting to Pincus & Co.
But don’t think for a second that Zynga’s expiring deal will spell doom for other third party Slingo partners. “We plan to continue working with a variety of development, publishing and distribution partners to continue to bring Slingo to fans on a wide range of platforms,” Murphy told us.
We weren’t able to confirm with Funkitron’s Dave Walls if this meant their work with Slingo would continue (he declined to comment), but for fans of their work, it looks like you might not want to rule out another Slingo Supreme or Slingo Quest just yet.
