Zynga Inc’s Chief Operating Officer Clive Downie has resigned from the company to join Unity Technologies as its Chief Marketing Officer, according a report from GamesBeat. Zynga is going through a tough time right now as not only are its games are losing players, the company is also unable to retain its top employees.
Zynga’s loss Unity’s gain
Unity Technologies is known for its expertise at manufacturing the design engine and the other tools for the gaming industry. Unity recently launched the Unity 5 game engine, but is still struggling to compete with Epic Games’ Unreal engine and a slew of smaller companies for market share.
In a recent interview with GamesBeat, San Francisco-based Unity Technologies CEO John Riccitiello expressed his delight over Clive joining the company as the CMO. “I’m super-happy to have him. He has a deep history in mobile gaming and a long history of marketing skills,” Riccitiello told GamesBeat.
Downie has experience of working with Zynga, a one-time leader in social gaming, and Unity believes that if they could make the optimum use of his experience to help Unity gain a strong and competitive position in the game-engine market
Blow to Zynga mobile efforts
The departure of Clive is certainly not good news for the company, especially at a time when the game maker is unable to come up with a game to win back its players. For the last quarter, Zynga missed the consensus estimate and ended up reporting a minor loss for 2014. There was a time when Zynga ruled social gaming on Facebook, but presently is unable to keep up with competitors in mobile games.
Zynga will definitely miss the expertise of Downie, who was hired to help game maker with mobile gaming. Before joining Zynga, Downie was the head of DeNA’s West division.
Just a few days ago, Zynga announced the departure of CEO Don Mattick after a 20 month stint at the gaming firm. Mattrick was replaced by the founder Mark Pincus. Separately, Zynga noted that former Genentech Chief Financial Officer Louis J. Lavigne Jr. will join its board.
