Today, Google’s games evangelist Mark DeLoura said that he has left the company after just four months on the job. In a blog post, DeLoura said, “This past Monday, I left Google. There are a lot of very interesting things going on at Google right now, and I enjoyed working with many of the people there, but it was not the perfect fit for me. I’m looking forward to my next adventure.”
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But DeLoura didn’t really have much to say about all of the other great things Google is doing for the game market. And perhaps that gives us a clue about why he left. Google is reportedly working on its own social network to compete with Facebook. For that, it needs to have good social games, and that is perhaps why it bought Slide and is preparing to invest $150 million in Zynga. But Google is far behind in the game space. DeLoura, a former Sony developer expert, brought the company some credibility in games. But now that he’s gone, so much for that.