Facebook Takes FishVille Offline and Zynga Takes its Offer Providers Offline

November 8th, 2009

By Eric Eldon

Zynga, the largest Facebook game developer and one of the largest on MySpace, has taken offers out of all of its games — a reaction to the appearance of scammy offers within Zynga’s new game, FishVille.

This is the latest blow to offer companies in social gaming. Zynga “has not been able to control the ad content as it is managed by the offer companies that we work with,” chief executive Mark Pincus wrote on his blog today. The company has previously said it works with six offer providers, with offers making up around a third of its revenue overall.

“[We] are removing all CPA offers across Zynga games until we can control their inclusion and presentation ourselves,” he says. ” This will be effective by end of day today. This move is worth it for the long-term user experience and value to our partners like facebook and myspace.”

Zynga launched FishVille last Friday, and when we covered it we noted the presence of mobile offers. The ones we saw looked legitimate, but TechCrunch found some that weren’t. Offer provider DoubleDing said it had included these offers by mistake. But the mistake came at a terrible time, as much of the industry has been already tarnished by the presence of scammy offers in games.

The result is that Facebook has taken FishVille offline. While Zynga has been running these offers in its games for many months, it is no surprise to see the company decide to take all its offer providers offline now. More, from Pincus:

Yesterday’s mobile offer issue was particularly painful as we had helped fund DoubleDing earlier this year in the hopes of cleaning up the space and raising the bar on user experience. We intend to influence them and others to improve their ad content and be long-term focused for the success of the social gaming and social networking industries.

To dig deeper into the social gaming market, check out our new report: Inside Virtual Goods: The Future of Social Gaming 2010.

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8 Responses to “Facebook Takes FishVille Offline and Zynga Takes its Offer Providers Offline”

andrew Says:
November 8th, 2009 at 6:03 pm
When will it be back on facebook?? its a cool game
FishVille Gets Millions of Users in First Week, But Sees Slower Growth Than Past Zynga Titles Says:
November 13th, 2009 at 10:44 am
[...] addition, the launch was marred a bit. One of Zynga’s offer providers was running scammy offers, so Facebook took it offline for about 36 hours. With that caveat in mind, I decided to look at the [...]
steven Says:
November 15th, 2009 at 7:42 am
please give me chips
FishVille: A Marinated Review Says:
November 18th, 2009 at 8:11 am
[...] even without a formal critique, the game has seen quite a bit of action, especially with the whole scammy offers fiasco that led to their removal, altogether, from Zynga games. Nonetheless, the game is certainly getting [...]
Can the Advertising Offers Business Find Redemption In Social Networks? Says:
November 19th, 2009 at 6:54 pm
[...] toughened its terms around offers, too. And Zynga, the largest social game developer, has also taken all of its offers offline until it can be sure of offer quality. Running clean offers, in other words, is now a necessity for [...]
Rumor: Zynga to Introduce Employee Stock Sale Plan as It Waits On IPO Says:
December 15th, 2009 at 7:06 pm
[...] the company, like others in the industry, has run some scammy advertising offers in the past, it decided to pull them all last month. At that point, it said it planned to keep offers out “until we can control their inclusion [...]
Interview with Zynga CEO Mark Pincus on Social Gaming in 2010 Says:
December 31st, 2009 at 1:07 pm
[...] this fall, Zynga was heavily criticized for running scammy advertising offers within its games; it pulled all offers, temporarily, while it ensures that it can cleanly run this revenue [...]
Nola Says:
February 18th, 2010 at 12:48 am
so fishville is down againe and wondering how long it will take my daughter can look on her compter and it was showing red so mt fish will be dead by moring ad well as my husband had expensive fish in his tank and he can’t get into his fish either please send me a e-mail so i know