Popular casual social game YoVille, which has a dedicated following of players despite having long since passed its peak in terms of popularity, gets a stay of execution today as Zynga has informed players it won’t be closing March 31 as previously announced. Instead, it will remain open with no new closure date announced, as talks between Zynga and Big Viking Games, the company looking to acquire the property, continue.
Zynga provided us the following statement, which it also sent to YoVille players via email, detailing its thoughts on the current state and immediate future of the game.
Dear YoVille Players,
We want to thank you for your continued support of YoVille over the last 5 years. The outpouring of love you have showed for YoVille, and your dedication to the communities you have nurtured over the years in the game has inspired all of us at Zynga. As some of you might know, we’ve had ongoing discussions with Big Viking Games, the original creators of YoVille, about ways we can work together to help keep the YoVille community alive. We are continuing to have those conversations and explore the future of YoVille and, as a result, will not be shutting down the game as planned on March 31.
We will have more updates to share with you soon, as our conversations with Big Viking Games progress and we determine next steps for the game, but we wanted to make sure you heard the news first as many of you have dedicated time over the last couple months to showing your support for YoVille and sharing your heartfelt stories about what the game means to you.
Sincerely,
The Zynga Team
I reached out to Big Viking Games to see if they’d comment, but they said they couldn’t discuss anything at this time and just pointed back to the Zynga statement. The Canadian game studio is co-founded by the original creator of YoVille, who sold the property to Zynga back in 2008, and is now looking to reacquire the property rather than see it shut down by its current owners. YoVille’s players had threatened to boycott Zynga when originally faced with the announcement of its closures, and many have been writing in to TechCrunch to voice their relief at the news that Zynga won’t be shuttering it as planned.