Zynga Breaks Draw Something Again
I admit, I play Draw Something on my iPhone. And I often regret it. On my old 3GS, I would only play when I knew I was going to get refreshments or warm up the bathwater because that’s how long it took to load. But my friends play, and some of them (Sue Holden!) are amazing fingertip artists.
Some Zynga History, OMG!
As you may have heard, Zynga, the game’s owners, have destroyed OMGPOP, the studio that created Draw Something, even though OMGPOP offered to buy themselves back so they can continue to make games and provide jobs. Zynga turned them down. The OMGPOP website will be torched soon, although I assume that Draw Something on iOS will continue. I haven’t seen any specific mention of Draw Something v.1.
I’m not going to rail on Zynga for this because I don’t know the full story. It’s possible that they value OMGPOP higher than the studio itself does, and simply didn’t want to start a negotiation. And as some publications have speculated, Zynga would look pretty stupid if OMGPOP went on to score some major hits. It also could be embarrassing to have to valuate OMGPOP not long after buying it for a cool $200M in March 2012. No one likes to admit they overpaid, but we all know they did, and we know the OMGPOPpers weren’t going to pay that same price on the way out. Still, it’s sad to see jobs cut, lives shaken, and viable game properties turned to charcoal.
And Now Draw Something’s Broken
Recently, Sue and I both noticed that Draw Something 1 (not the new version, which we never bothered to install) is jacked, and there’s a resurgence of people complaining about this error on the ‘net. It happens in a particularly frustrating way: you finish your drawing, press send, and the game coughs up this error message: “Hey it looks like you are playing on multiple devices.” After a suggestion that you not play on multiple devices (which I don’t), you’re kicked back out and your drawing is lost forever.
This, my friends, is the difference between fun and work.
There is a post on the Zynga support site, dated August 1, that says they’re working on it. At the same time, I have to wonder: how hard would it be for a disgruntled OMGPOP employee to throw a very large virtual wrench into the works of some of Zynga’s biggest properties?
