Facebook Racks Up Record Games Revenue, Even as Zynga Presence Wanes
Recent changes to Facebook’s relationship with Zynga may have hurt the social gaming company’s revenue, but that doesn’t seem to have put the hurt on Facebook’s payments biz. Indeed, posting first quarter earnings Wednesday, the social networking company reported its largest quarter of games revenue ever. Payments revenue from games for the period rose 12 percent. This in spite of some major adjustments to its partnership with Zynga.
“Q1 represented our largest three-month quarter of games revenue to date despite a 37 percent drop in year-over-year payments volume from our largest developer,” Facebook CFO David Ebersman said during the company’s earnings call. “Our other developers increased their payments volumes by almost 60 percent, and we saw record numbers of people playing games on Facebook.”
So even with a significant drop in revenue from its “largest developer” — the company formerly known as Zynga — Facebook still saw record game revenue and engagement. And that’s something of a sea change. Even as Zynga’s presence wanes, Facebook’s game offerings remain solid because other developers are rushing in to fill the gap — the Kings and Woogas of the world, for instance.