New departure from Zynga: Omgpop's chief revenue officer (exclusive)
Joining the exodus of executives who have left Zynga recently, Wilson Kriegel, the former chief revenue officer of Omgpop, has left the company, GamesBeat has learned. — Kriegel was part of the company that Zynga bought earlier …
Context & Ripple Effects
Six months after Zynga's March 2012 acquisition of Omgpop — a deal whose Draw Something hit briefly lifted Zynga's daily user traffic by 25% — the studio's chief revenue officer Wilson Kriegel has walked out the door. He is the latest name in a confirmed pattern: CityVille GM Alan Patmore left for Kixeye in August, Zynga invested in Mike Verdu's new game company rather than keep him, and reports of sinking stock and falling employee morale have trailed the company since late summer.
The departures matter because Zynga built its executive bench partly by import — Jeff Karp arrived from EA in 2011 as chief marketing and revenue officer — and the same talent market that once supplied Zynga is now bidding for its people. Rumors of further vice-president exits, including Bill Mooney and Brian Birtwistle, remain unconfirmed, but the direction of travel is what competitors are watching.
First-order effects
- Zynga loses the revenue-side leadership of its newest studio while the Omgpop integration is still fresh, leaving Draw Something's monetization without the executive who owned it.
- Kriegel joins a confirmed exodus — Patmore to Kixeye, Verdu out with Zynga as an investor — that thins the management layer just as the stock decline pressures retention.
Second-order effects
- Rivals like Kixeye, which already landed Patmore, gain a proven recruiting lane into Zynga's acquired studios, raising the price Zynga must pay in equity or autonomy to hold remaining Omgpop staff.
- Every departure raises the perceived risk of Zynga's acquisition model, making founders and executives at future targets demand richer retention terms before signing.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Zynga's buy-the-studio strategy inverts into a talent revolving door: acquisitions become recruiting pipelines for competitors unless the stock recovers enough to make unvested equity worth staying for.
- The broader social-gaming industry shifts toward a seller's market for proven mobile-game operators, with exit-and-restart ventures like Verdu's becoming the standard career path for departed Zynga executives.
The trend: Zynga's post-IPO stock slide is converting its acquisition spree from a talent magnet into a retention liability, with acquired executives departing as soon as their options allow.