No plans for real-money, says Zynga
Zynga Casino GM tells eGR that 'fun' aspect of existing social gaming products will remain company's focus.
The general manager of Zynga Casino has revealed to eGaming Review that the social games developer has “No plans to enter the real-money market.”
Zynga, whose poker product is the third most popular game on Facebook with an estimated 30m monthly active players worldwide (according to AppData), intends to continue using its play-for-fun/monetised virtual currency model which has served it so well since Zynga Poker launched in July 2007.
Formerly in charge of Zynga Poker before taking control of the casino platform after its unveiling in October, Lo Toney (pictured) explained that user experience remains the key for the company, saying: “We are in the virtual goods business and we have been able to create a good business for ourselves like this, so we have no plans to enter the real-money market.
“The payment model for the company is that we develop free-to-play games and then monetise a smaller percentage of our players. People will pay to purchase chips to play in games and to buy bingo cards “ I still think the majority of players will play for free and others will purchase chips,” Toney added.
Zynga Casino was unveiled In October this year, just months after Facebook relaxed its gambling advertising rules, with a bingo product set to join poker on the portfolio. Toney, however said he was not concerned about the threat posed by the increased presence of egaming operators on the social network either through advertising or free-play products such as that introduced by Chiligaming in September.
“We have historically faced many competitors and we have always focused on providing the best experience to our customers,” said Toney, adding that “we want to make sure we can continue to provide that experience which has got us to 30m players every month.
“The way we look at things is if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. We will continue to focus on our brand and bettering ourselves, and that is how we have grown the company until now: creating games that are fun, social and free-to-play.”
One change that has been made by the company in recent months, however, is the launch of Project Z, which lessens the reliance on revenues generated via Facebook. This comes after Zynga Poker was launched on Google+ in August, while the company has also developed games for iOS, Android and HTML5 platforms.
Lo Toney was speaking to eGaming Review during the International Federation of Poker’s inaugural Poker Nations Cup, a ‘duplicate poker’ tournament featuring teams from 11 member states of poker’s official governing body as well as a twelfth team from “the digital nation of Zynga”.
Duplicate poker is a variant of poker designed to minimise the luck element, and players from the 12 teams played in separate carriages of the London Eye. The tournament is part of the International Mind Sports Festival in London, and took place from Thursday to Sunday last week.
Poker players in attendance on the opening night included Genting Poker representative Barny Boatman and PKR pro Jake Cody.
Toney said: “The fact that we are represented as a ‘digital nation’ speaks so much about how we have been able to exercise our vision. A lot of people have said the number of people we have playing Zynga Poker makes us like a country so why shouldn’t we have a team playing in the Nations Cup?