Zynga is continuing its shopping spree today with the acquisition of social game developer DNA Games, marking its 14th acquisition in the past 12 months. It’s important to note that this is an actual acquisition of both the talent and company, as opposed to the recent ‘acq-hires’ Zynga has been making in the past few months. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
DNA Games was founded in 2009 by a trio of former execs from SEM firm Bazaar Advertising (including Jon Lee and Shaun Haase), which was acquired by AzoogleAds in 2007. Since 2009, the gaming startup has developed a number of hit social games on Facebook, including Casino City, Slot City and Bar World.
Casino City has been steadily growing in monthly usage on Facebook. In total, DNA reaches 2.4 million monthly active users on Facebook. Currently Casino City has 1.5 million monthly active users, Slot City has 438K users, and Bar World has 382K active monthly users.
As DNA writes on its site, “We are one piece game design “art”, another piece user recruiting optimization “science” and a third piece top-flight software engineering.” The startup has raised $2 million in new funding from Battery Ventures and Bain Capital Ventures.
Zynga says the DNA team will form the core of a studio focused on creating new games with DNA Games’ Founder and CEO, Jon Lee as the General Manager reporting to Mark Skaggs, SVP of Product Development. It’s unclear if DNA’s games will become part of Zynga’s game portfolio, but we hear Zynga is evaluating whether this actually makes sense.
Zynga’s past acquisitions this year include the team behind cocos2d, Wonderland, JamLegend, MarketZero, Floodgate, social browser Flock, and New York’s Area/Code.
Zynga was founded in July 2007 by Mark Pincus and is named for his late American Bulldog, Zinga. Loyal and spirited, Zinga’s name is a nod to a legendary African warrior queen. The early supporting founding team included Eric Schiermeyer, Michael Luxton, Justin Waldron, Kyle Stewart, Scott Dale, John Doerr, Steve Schoettler, Kevin Hagan, and Andrew Trader. Zynga’s mission is connecting the world through games. Everyday millions of people interact with their friends and express their unique personalities through our...
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