Corporate stuff

It's not uncommon for a disgruntled employee to share issues about a former employer with the world. But when the CEO gets into the mix, everything escalates. OMGPOP Chief Executive Dan Porter is learning that lesson right now.

The trouble started last week when OMGPOP employee Shay Pierce wrote an editorial on gaming site Gamasutra, saying that he refused to work for Zynga -- the company that had acquired his employer -- because he didn't want to sign over rights to an iOS game he created, called Connectrode. But his troubles with his [prospective new employer extended far … Read more

Angry Birds maker Rovio has added another studio to its lineup.

The Finnish company announced today that it's bought Futuremark Games Studio, the gaming unit of benchmarking software developer Futuremark. Creating games for a variety of platforms, Futuremark Games Studio has developed such titles as Unstoppable Gorg, Hungribles, and Shattered Horizon.

"They are an incredibly talented and experienced team, and we are thrilled to have them on board," Mikael Hed, Rovio Entertainment's CEO, said in a statement. "Rovio's success is founded on the excellence of our team, and Futuremark Games Studio is going to … Read more

Rumor has it that game maker Zynga is in the running to buy the company OMGPOP, which makes the newest chart-topping game Draw Something.

If the acquisition goes through, it will be Zynga's biggest buyout to date, according the tech news site TechCrunch, which spoke to sources with direct knowledge of discussions between the two companies.

"Given that OMGPOP has raised around $17 million to date," TechCrunch reporter Kim-Mai Cutler wrote in an article speculating about the acquisition. "I'd expect the price for this deal to be in the $150 [million] to $250 million range.&… Read more

The creative visionary behind Black & White and the Fable series video games, Peter Molyneux, announced today that after a decade he was leaving both Lionhead Studios and Microsoft's Xbox team and moving onto a new venture, according to video game news site Kotaku.

"It is with mixed emotions that I made the decision to leave Microsoft and Lionhead Studios, the company that I co-founded in 1997," Molyneux said in a statement to Kotaku.

This news comes days after the Xbox showcase of the latest version of the Fable series--Fable: The Journey. This role-playing game is … Read more

Zynga’s fourth quarter was strong and the company is humming along as its social games continue to lure users.

However, the company said first half sequential growth would be “slower” with a pick up in the last six months of the year.

That disclosure led to a 7 percent dip in after-hours trading.

Overall, Zynga’s quarter was better than expected. The company reported a fourth-quarter loss of $435 million, or $1.22 a share, on revenue of $311.2 million. Non-GAAP earnings were 5 cents a share.

Wall Street was looking for fourth-quarter non-GAAP earnings of 3 cents … Read more

Apple might be a hardware company, but the iPhone maker seems to be increasingly focused on gaming.

Robin Burrowes, former marketing manager at Xbox UK and head of product marketing at Microsoft UK, has moved to Apple's European office to handle App Store Marketing, several reports out of the country and Burrowes' own LinkedIn profile claim.

As U.K. gaming publication MCV points out, Apple has been aggressively attracting gaming public relations professionals over the last several months. The company has brought on former Nintendo UK PR boss Robert Saunders, as well as Nick Grange, who worked in the … Read more

Zynga, the San Francisco-based maker of FarmVille and other social games, has upped its gaming lineup, saying today that it bought four mobile gaming companies during the past five months, according to Reuters.

Among the companies Zynga acquired is German-based Gamedoctors, which created the game ZombieSmash; San Francisco-based Page44 Studios, which developed the "World of Goo;" HipLogic that is also based in San Francisco; and New York-based Astro Ape Studios. Zynga declined to say how much it paid for the companies.

As the top maker of Facebook games, Zynga acknowledges that it has been looking to increase its presence across multiple devices, … Read more

What's it like to be a top manager or engineer in Silicon Valley and a woman? Google's Marissa Mayer, Flickr founder Catarina Fake, and Padmasree Warrior of Cisco Systems talked about that and more today at the CNET Women in Tech panel.

The three agreed that progress has been made, but that there's still a long way to go to get more women into the technology field.

Mayer said she believes we need to get more people interested in technology overall--men and women. Warrior said we need to find ways to keep women in the workforce and … Read more

Electronic Arts today announced its financial results for the three months ended June 30, beating its fiscal first-quarter guidance with a boost from first-person puzzler Portal 2.

Digital revenue was also up strongly for the quarter, with EA reporting $209 million in sales for the quarter. The publisher's previous 12 months of digital sales have reaped $854 million in sales, up 35 percent from the year prior to that. The console digital market growth has been particularly pronounced, surging 91 percent year-over-year.

For the first fiscal quarter, EA reported sales of $999 million, up from $815 million for the … Read more