Zynga plunges on lower forecast

San Francisco: Zynga Inc tumbled to a record after the game maker cut its forecast for full-year bookings, a predictor of sales, citing lower demand for titles such as “The Ville.”

Zynga dropped 12 per cent to $2.48 in New York, the lowest closing price since the company’s initial public offering in December. Shares of Facebook Inc, operator of the social network responsible for most of Zynga’s game revenue, declined 4.7 per cent to $20.91.

Zynga, which makes most of its money by selling virtual goods in games played on Facebook, is struggling with slowing growth as users spend more time on mobile devices. Pressure on the stock, which had fallen 75 per cent since the IPO, has lowered the value of equity used to compensate staff, hastening the departure of some of the company’s key managers.

“For a lot of employees, it was one thing when you were getting a bunch of options at Zynga when the stock was at $15, but now that the stock is near $2 it’s a lot easier to leave,” said Michael Pachter, an analyst at Wedbush Securities Inc in Los Angeles.

Zynga lost two developers today, as Paul Bettner and David Bettner, creators of the “Words With Friends” mobile game, departed. The exits follow the departures of at least eight managers since early August, including Jeff Karp its former marketing chief, who resigned last month.

Bookings this year will be no more than $1.1 billion, compared with an earlier forecast for as much as $1.23 billion, San Francisco-based Zynga said yesterday in a statement. The company also wrote down the value of its acquisition of OMGPop Inc and sliced its forecast for a closely watched measure of profitability.