Chief Game Designer Brian Reynolds Leaves Zynga

Another key member of Zynga’s team has left the beleaguered social game maker. This time it’s chief game designer Brian Reynolds, as reported on Bloomberg. The company confirmed Reynolds’ departure, but did not offer any details about why Reynolds is leaving or his last day. In a statement, Steve Chiang, president of games, said:

“Brian has a long history in the game industry and has been a great partner to the creative leaders at Zynga. I want to thank him for his leadership of the Zynga Baltimore studio in the design and development of FrontierVille, which brought many innovations to social gaming. We appreciate Brian’s contribution and we’re proud of the deep bench of creative leaders who are leading the next wave of game innovation at Zynga. We wish Brian the best in his next chapter.”

Reynold has worked at Zynga since 2009, when he was hired to found and lead Zynga East in Baltimore. Prior to that, he was a co-founder and the CEO of Big Huge Games. Reynolds was a lead designer on games including Civilization II and Alpha Centauri.

This is the latest in a series of high profile executive exits over the past year. In November, treasurer Mike Gupta left to take on a new role as vice president of corporate finance and treasurer at Twitter. Gupta’s exit came the same week as CFO Dave Wehner, who left Zynga to take a job at Facebook. Other resignations since summer 2012 include COO John Schappert, infrastructure CTO Allan Leiwand, chief creative officer Mike Verdu, chief marketing and revenue officer Jeff Karp, chief security officer Nils Puhlmann, among others. In addition, the company also had a mass layoff in October, including the closing of its Boston office. Zynga replenished its executive roster with a series of new hires, but the company’s shares have struggled over the past year, falling more than 80% since the beginning of March.