The FarmVille kingdom just got a little smaller.
As part of its fourth-quarter earnings release today, Zynga announced today that it has closed its Chinese studio, terminating 71 employees in the process. The branch, located in Beijing, was making games specifically for that market along with adapting hits like FarmVille. However, Zynga said that its releases weren’t performing well enough in the $25 billion mobile gaming industry to keep it open. Zynga China started in 2010 after the mobile publisher acquired Chinese gaming startup XPD Media.
[aditude-amp id="flyingcarpet" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":1660735,"post_type":"story","post_chan":"none","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"games,","session":"B"}']Zynga has had to deal with more popular and home-grown mobile publishers in China like FunPlus, which created the FarmVille-like Family Farm. FunPlus has expanded its operation world-wide, including offices in San Francisco and Vancouver.
This isn’t the first foreign studio Zynga closed. It shuttered its Japan division in 2013 as a cost-saving measure.