Job News

Zynga founder Pincus out, as Alex Garden becomes head of studios

New chief marketing and visual officers hired

Zynga founder Pincus out, as Alex Garden becomes head of studios

On the back of another bad set of financials, and with little hope of change in the foreseeable future, Zynga has been further shuffling its executive pack.

The headline news is that founding CEO Mark Pincus has been shunted from his position as chief product officer to the ceremonial role of chairman of the board of directors.

It's a remarkable turnaround for the man who took Zynga public 15 months ago, but one that demonstrates his failure to transition the company away from Facebook and to mobile, the terrible performance of its share price, and the power of new CEO Don Mattrick.

Planting the seeds

There are plenty of new faces in the Zynga executive line-up, however.

Relic Entertainment founder and CEO Alex Garden, who's also worked at Nexon and previously was GM for Xbox Live at Microsoft, takes the position of president of Zynga Studios.

With the exception of new acquisition NaturalMotion, all Zynga's studios will now report to Garden.

Zynga has also hired ex-EA, Microsoft, ILM and DreamWorks veteran Henry LaBounta as chief visual officer, while Jennifer Nuckles has been appointed chief marketing officer.


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Contributing Editor

A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon is Contributing Editor at PG.biz which means he acts like a slightly confused uncle who's forgotten where he's left his glasses. As well as letters and cameras, he likes imaginary numbers and legumes.