The Chief Creative Officer (“CCO”) of the social game maker, Zynga Inc (NADAQ:ZNGA), has left the company, thereby becoming the fifth top manager to depart from the company this month. According to reports, the CCO joins a host of top management employees who have left the company in recent weeks, due to reasons rumored to be related to the company’s stock performance.
Other top executives who recently left the ailing gaming company include Jeremy Strauser, a general manager, and Ya-Bing Chu, a vice president, among others according to information received from reliable sources last week.
Zynga Inc (NASDAQ:ZYNGA) has been experiencing tough times since going public last December, as its stock has slumped 69%, and consequently, affected the employees compensation value tied to the stock.
Additionally, Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) recently moved to change the way games appear on its website, to begin with the most recent, at the expense of popularity, further impacting negatively on Zynga Inc (NASDAQ:ZNGA)’s outlook. This luck of promise and return has now seen at least five top managers leave the company, as quoted on Business Week.
The former CCO now moves on to pursue other interest and hinted that he would be starting his own company by saying, “being at Zynga in the early days reminded me of how much I love being an entrepreneur.” Verdu then added, “after a lot of soul-searching, I have decided to go back to my roots and start a new company.”
The report also notes that Zynga Inc (NASDAQ:ZNGA) is eyeing at the opportunity to invest in Verdu’s new venture, which is expected to focus on mobile platform games, according to a spokeswoman of the company. Verdu had been with Zynga for a period of three years, since joining the from Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ:EA).
At the time of this writing, the company’s stock was down $0.03 per share, or nearly 1% decline at premarket, to trade at $2.93 per share.
