Zynga CEO one of Bloomberg's 'worst CEOs of 2012'
Dartmouth College business school professor chooses five worst top executives in past year, naming Mark Pincus to the list.
Zynga CEO Mark Pincus is one of the "worst CEOs of 2012," according to Dartmouth College Tuck School of Business professor Sydney Finkelstein. His list of five worst top executives was published at Bloomberg recently, and provides multiple reasons as to why Pincus came up short in 2012.
Finkelstein said Pincus made some "rookie mistakes" in 2012, including depending too heavily on Facebook for revenue. Additionally, Finkelstein cited Pincus unloading 16 million Zynga shares as a reason to believe he may not have much confidence in the company moving forward. A Zynga representative declined to comment.
The other four CEOs named to the list were Best Buy's Brian Dunn, Chesapeake Bay's top executive Aubrey McClendon, Avon's Andrea Jung, and Bankia executive Rodrigo Rata.
Zynga shares have tanked this year. After peaking in March at around $15, the company's per-share value as of today stands at $2.45, a dip of more than 80 percent. Zynga also faces a high-profile lawsuit from Electronic Arts over The Ville and has seen numerous top management defections in the past year.
Eddie Makuch (Mack-ooh) is a News Editor at GameSpot. He lives in Connecticut, works out of the company's New York City office, and loves extra chunky peanut butter.
Never started playing browser games and never will.
Who exactly gives a monkey nut about this? Don't care about the company don't care about the man. The sooner they disappear the better really.
you know what's depressing though?
if this loser quits/gets fired/the company fails because of him. Chances are he'll walk away a rich man, with a hefty pension package, while hundreds of people are left without jobs.
yeay capitalism?
shingui5 Looks like the company is failing because he's there. If he quits/gets fired, Zynga might actually have a chance.
lol @ "casual" gaming
And that's Karma for Mark Pincus. There was a time when he thought he was all high and mighty when Farmville was doing good. He thought he knew what the gaming industry is all about.
Whell all they do is copy games and make shitty versions of that, so i hope theyr shares reach 0.00 and they just quit
Even despising Zynga's policies, I find it hard to believe he is at the same level of Rodrigo Rato (former minister of finances in Spain, now CEO of a bank investigated for cooking books for around 11bn euro)
I'm sure it has NOTHING to with the ferociously terrible and extremely stupid games they make...
And people said casual gaming is the future
pssh-ahh I say
Not surprised. Still waiting for the inevitable.
Pump and Dump Stock Scam seriously look it up.
He was a moron to agree to it and now his company is suffering.
no surprise here..... especially with the shameless ripoffs they made my wife even shown me via facebook specifically the sims social rip off.
Zynga in general... Leave and never come back u money hungry game stealer's!
What is really sad is when a bad CEOs f$)&@&$ks up, he usually loses some of his money, but keeps a lot of it....on the other hand the poor employees of the company usually loose a lot of money if not their jobs.
I dont know....
At the end of the day he got 16M$ in his bank account while I a barely have 900$.
How I wish to be as bad as him....
Sampawende 16 millions? He probably have several hundreds of millions in his bank account.
I had a feeling this day would come and I feel like it is a just reward. Pay to win on the scale that Zynga used was in my opinion just a matter of time before people realized it was crap.
Who's really worse here? This guy and his company or the millions of fucking mongoloids who actually spend money on facebook games?
That's what ya get when all your company does is try to rip people off. Just listen to this real money gambling stuff. It's completely ridiculous and immoral.
It's gonna be awesome when he has to sell his private Mediterranean island, his 200 acre estate-vineyard in southern France and he's bought out for a shamefully low nine-figure sum.
I love it when bad CEO's finally get theirs.
BravoOneActual you know 9 figures is a lot of money right and you can buy private islands / vineyards for that much.
And he doesn't have to sell anything because he also sits on the board of facebook and holds one of the biggest patents in the tech industry.
BravoOneActual Errmmm... when have the big bad CEOs finally got theirs? I can't remember. All they get is the golden handshakes.
BravoOneActual He already sold 16 million shares (for more than it's worth). That money is now his, even if Zynga goes bankrupt.
What I wouldn't do to see the death of EA....like karmic ambrosia nom nom nom nom nom.....
@esqueejy EA is one of the only large dev houses still allowing their companies to try new things in games... your comment is ridiculous. madden doesnt innovate because it is clear that the people that buy those games dont require innovation. all most football fans want is a roster update and more realistic gameplay... which is exactly what they get each year. EA has had dozens of games that have gone in new and interesting directions over the last 5 years. that is far more than i can say about activision/blizzard...Deadspace is probably the BEST survival horror series to come out since silent hill, Kingdoms of Amalur did some interesting things with an MMO style world and fast combat in an RPG, Mirrors Edge was the best first person platformer to ever come out, SWTOR, while fail in most areas, showed that an MMO can have a very good storyline instead of just grindy levels.
zynga is a fad. all of those shit die so they must've seen it coming
Zynga, sucking the life out of gaming since 2007.
Yep. Cos if you develop games for iOS you're instantly a winner apparently.
Or not.
Both Zynga and EA's shares are way down? Sweet! Maybe now they will both tank.
vault-boy You are a bit crazy if you compare EA to the cesspool of filth called Zynga. EA releases many good games.
See ya!
ah that Picture That shit eating Grin
Of the zynga CEO
It may sound horrible because people would lose their jobs, but I wouldn't mind seeing Zynga go down.
not sure if he worst than EA or Activision ? but equally seem reasonable at a time.
Was this a surprise to anyone?!?!?!?!?
Zynga is just a parasitic company that lucked out on some fads.
Zynga dies by the end of 2013... A business that solely relies on FB to generate income is a recipe for disaster. FB interest in gaming has peaked say a year ago. Now its just massive spam, requests, invites, notifications, etc. It got to the point where its more work to clear up ones FB than actually enjoying reading/stalking ones ex's, friends, family, etc.
Personally, I wouldn't miss this company, their contribution to gaming history would be Farmville and plagiarizing other video game companies.
In fact, many of the worst CEOs are greedy SOBs who do not care at all about their company, and who just use the company as a way to personally become rich. Sinking the whole company in the process and having thousands of people lose their jobs is fair game to them.
That guy might be a terrible CEO, but a good businessman. He probably doesn't give a damn about Zynga and their employees. He overhyped Zynga to insane levels, then made the company public at the peak of the fad, then sold a ton of shares to become rich. Who cares if Zynga goes bankrupt? This guy will be laughing all the way to the bank.
@Ladiesman17 I think you mean the former Sony CEO Howard Stringer, who indeed received some bad marks from analysts. Current CEO Kaz Hirai has only been around a couple of years.
Facebook and Sony CEO's should be on the list.
That picture is perfect. Look a him, so happy he won.
well deserved title. the whole company was one bad decision with EVIL business practices and their only strategy for making games being ripping off other games and adding a freemium model and putting it up on facebook.
Rodrigo Rata? ROFL, it's Rodrigo Rato and he's the worst. About 5000+ people gonna lose their jobs, lot of families lost their homes and savings and he turned one of strongest banks in the country into a tanking mess. But he still took a 600.000 euros compensation when left.
Aside from that the Zynga guy looks quite dumb too.
That man is a genius. He took existing board games, renamed them as a phone app, and is now selling them as a new board game.
SuburbanBuddha That was the general consensus pre-2012. Now, people are starting to realize that repackaging existing games isn't a great way to sustain a company with 3000 employees. Especially when your business model is prone to high-profile lawsuits with industry giants such as EA.
mlms13
That was insightful and very helpful. I always love getting business lectures on a gaming site. After all, we know no one is ever sarcastic on the internet.
by the way did you create that profile just to comment to me? I'm flattered
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