the nytimes article pointed out that they created 35 games, most of which I assume aren't close to being as popular and successful as draw something. Also, there were already a couple of pictionary games on the app store, charadium and depict that are quite similar. So this just feel like a fluke. The developers themselves were surprised at the success.
If this is a fluke, why would anyone expect the developers to be able to replicate the success on other games in the future? I think I read somewhere the current run-rate revenue of draw is around 100k a day. But you would expect that to tail off when it reaches saturation. Probably most of that comes from the initial purchase, rather than in game purchases. So you're looking at more than 6x of current revenue which will decrease over time, just to break even on the purchase, and not counting expenses.
Don't get me wrong, I'm sure the developers are talented, and they deserve getting paid. The only people losing are the shareholders of Zynga, and less the management, since they've been dumping the stock. I think Zynga is probably under a lot of pressure to diversify it's revenue away from Facebook, as well as grow the revenue to justify it's valuation.
This chart illustrates the exact opposite of Zynga shareholders losing something:
https://twitter.com/#!/nabeel/status/182821510493384704 and also Zynga is under a lot of pressure to diversify into other markets, just like every other business in the world. Mobile is an obvious huge market Zynga can dominate now.
I've done a lot of game design/development both as a hobby and semi-professionally. I have a rule of thumb for when some person/company says they've created 35 games: almost all of those will have been clones of other games they've played before. Just with superficial differences and tweaks. Almost always what happens is a person/team just re-implements it in a fresh codebase they control. If this is true in OMGPOP's case, it would mean they'd be a perfect fit for Zynga, given their modus operandi discussed so many times on HN recently.
I have another rule for computer/web games in particular. If someone says they've created 35 games it almost always means their small simple Flash games. And again, almost always clones of some other game that already existed. It's very very rare that someone truly designs an original game, from scratch, whether a computer game or board game, etc.
Taking quick look at OMGPOP's site... let's see, clones/reimpls of Checkers, Connect Four, Missile Command... I'll stop now.
If this is a fluke, why would anyone expect the developers to be able to replicate the success on other games in the future? I think I read somewhere the current run-rate revenue of draw is around 100k a day. But you would expect that to tail off when it reaches saturation. Probably most of that comes from the initial purchase, rather than in game purchases. So you're looking at more than 6x of current revenue which will decrease over time, just to break even on the purchase, and not counting expenses.
Don't get me wrong, I'm sure the developers are talented, and they deserve getting paid. The only people losing are the shareholders of Zynga, and less the management, since they've been dumping the stock. I think Zynga is probably under a lot of pressure to diversify it's revenue away from Facebook, as well as grow the revenue to justify it's valuation.
Comparing acq of OMGPOP to Youtube is just silly.