The distressed cry of girls and easily bored Bulgarian city council members will be heard 'round the world when this huge chunk of Facebook is torn out.

The one part of the article that caught my attention was:

"The decision to eliminate the spammy notifications automatically generated by games..."

THANK GOD! One of the main reason I only check my Facebook page once or twice a week is because I DO NOT CARE what someone is doing in Mafia Wars or whatever lobotmized excuse for a "game" they happen to be wasting their time with....

I'd love them both to disappear under their own raging paranoia and programming issues, but my money's on only one surviving, and there being an empty slot next March.

I think this is a bad move by Zynga.

A game like farmtown, (where they take a perfectly fine game like Harvest Moon, remove the soul of it, beat the difficulty down to a cripple, then reanimate the disfigured remains, and paint it up like a whore), just wouldn't work on its own, even if it has the extra utlities Facebook provides the unwashed masses.

Unless it has millions to spend in advertising...

*ahem*
*gets up on soapbox*
*turns on megaphone*
*feedback*

FUCK ZYNGA

*gets off soapbox*
*turns off megaphone*
*retreats back to lurk more*

they'll lose a solid 10-20% of their playerbase and likely not gain any new people leaving bookface.
but the unrestricted advert potential makes me think its still a smart move.
your own site with 10's of millions of hits every day...damn, i can see the $$.

At least I'll stop being asked to give people some bloody sheep.

I hope they do this, because they will lose a lot of customers that way. Most of the people who use their apps doesn't know enough about computers or the intertubes, so they will simply not find the site. Of the few who will, only a handful will actually care enough to move on to another site. I'd say maybe 100.000 players will follow them. This is purely my thoughts (and fervent wish), and I have come to this conclusion by having lurked on their forums for several months. I am an ex-user of some of their apps you see.

Oh, and having followed what they do I can say this: Zynga operates the same way as drug dealers do. At first every update meant more items for your farm which only cost in-game money. Then more and more items cost real money. Now most updates have no in-game money items at all. So get them hooked with free stuff, then charge through their eyeballs.

hopefully they can fuck off my Facebook page once and for bloody all. and hopefully also dissolve to nothing but bad memories.

That would be stupid of them. People don't play Farmville because it's a compelling game; they play it because it's on Facebook. The chances that such a person AND all of his/her Facebook friends would be willing to play the game elsewhere is slim to none.

Even more telling, as Gamezebo notes, is the fact that changes are continuing to come at an ever-quicker pace. Zynga has begun requiring email addresses from its players, presumably to facilitate communications without the need for Facebook, and in late April added, and then upgraded, in-game gifting to FarmVille.

That was required by Facebook to help avoid cluttering people's walls.

Zynga isn't leaving Facebook. It's where their money comes from.

Virgil:
These two things are actually related. Facebook removed the ability for applications to send users real notifications, and told them to ask the users for email addresses instead. It was a cheap solution to the problem of spammy applications. Instead of building tools for their users to manage/limit notifications or placing and enforcing limits on the applications themselves, they just moved the entire problem off of Facebook and into their users' inboxes.

Which is somewhat amusing, because the tools were already there.

I heard Zynga was planning on moving over to The Escapist.

Marmooset:
I heard Zynga was planning on moving over to The Escapist.

No! You just ruined the surprise!

...

This makes me smile. Isn't it funny how things change?

Well it was bound to happen Zynga get too popular i must kill it now *loads 50 calibur M1 Carbine automatic rifle*

Marmooset:
I heard Zynga was planning on moving over to The Escapist.

That explains a lot from March, and why we keep getting reports and updates on the game when most of us don't seem to give a crap. Now what we need is more Robot Unicorn Attack updates. Granted there are none to be had, but I still feel like 99% of our content here should be that game.

Zynga wants to leave Facebook and make games independent of a social network?

Who do they think they are!? Game developers!?

EDIT: Facebook should be getting like a 90% cut, they're the ones doing all the work

Zynga would stay on Facebook if they are smart.

Equally, Facebook is doing what is smart on their part by eliminating the annoying nuances of friend whoring. It's not supposed to be a slap in Zynga's face, rather it's something Facebook is doing to make their site easier and more convenient for their users old and new. If Zynga feels threatened by that, then they are too selfish and greedy for their own good. Facebook shouldn't be accommodating an entity like Zynga, they should be accommodating what brings them revenue, which is repeat and new users. Zynga can choose to embrace that and continue to thrive on the biggest, most popular website on the internet, or they can take a chance and leave, and probably fail.

It's true that browser games are integral to Facebook and one of the driving factors of repeat visits, but 90% of those people playing the games don't care if it's Zynga providing it to them or if it's another company. All they care about is that it takes a couple mouse clicks to get to, and if Zynga decides to leave, I think they'll be screwed. So /end rant. That's just my 2 cents.

Yeah, I don't think Zynga players play it because they're good games... they're easy games to play on an all ready popular website. If they go it alone, it might not end well as casual players may lose interest...

I say they should go for it and leave Facebook.

_{Then maybe I can go on there without hearing a thing about those 'games'.}

Andy Chalk:

The changes will no doubt improve the gameplay experience for Zynga fans

HAHAHA yea right... sorry.

It's not a hard to understand move, however wasn't the foundation on Facebook the reason that... thing thrived?

Yes please.
I'm so tired of all these games on facebook that just generate more and more spam.

This'll be one step closer to the glory days of facebook. When you had a page that you could look at and actually use it to keep in contact with people.

Good riddance! No more spam of "Jane Doe has baked cookies and is sharing them with you!"

Yay! No more will the FaceBook pages be flooded with some bastard asking us to take their Super Stove piece or that they a sheep!

I don't use FaceBook and that was one the reasons I was avoiding it.

Jandau:
The one part of the article that caught my attention was:

"The decision to eliminate the spammy notifications automatically generated by games..."

THANK GOD! One of the main reason I only check my Facebook page once or twice a week is because I DO NOT CARE what someone is doing in Mafia Wars or whatever lobotmized excuse for a "game" they happen to be wasting their time with....

You can hide app or game-specific notifications from the news feed.

sylphmortem:

Jandau:
The one part of the article that caught my attention was:

"The decision to eliminate the spammy notifications automatically generated by games..."

THANK GOD! One of the main reason I only check my Facebook page once or twice a week is because I DO NOT CARE what someone is doing in Mafia Wars or whatever lobotmized excuse for a "game" they happen to be wasting their time with....

You can hide app or game-specific notifications from the news feed.

I tried, but apparently I didn't click enough options, or they reset, or whatever. In all honesty, I didn't feel like digging through all the options and ferreting out the culprits, I didn't visit FB enough to care. I was still annoyed by it, though, so that sentence caught my eye, that's all.

How about they leave Facebook and aim for something bigger. Like the sun, or a black hole.

Jandau:

I tried, but apparently I didn't click enough options, or they reset, or whatever. In all honesty, I didn't feel like digging through all the options and ferreting out the culprits, I didn't visit FB enough to care. I was still annoyed by it, though, so that sentence caught my eye, that's all.

I can relate. I'm getting too old for facebook's antics as well.

Off topic <3 Raziel.

RetroVortex:
I think this is a bad move by Zynga.

A game like farmtown, (where they take a perfectly fine game like Harvest Moon, remove the soul of it, beat the difficulty down to a cripple, then reanimate the disfigured remains, and paint it up like a whore), just wouldn't work on its own, even if it has the extra utlities Facebook provides the unwashed masses.

Unless it has millions to spend in advertising...

They might team up with Evony. In a month or so, you'll see scantily clad boobs advertising Farmville.