Rumours troubled social gaming giant Zynga would undertake a major round of restructuring have been confirmed by CEO Don Mattrick, with three high-end executives leaving their posts.

Zynga has published a letter – sent by Mattrick to employees – detailing the departures, with COO David Ko, CPO Colleen McCreary and CTO Cadir Lee leaving to "pursue other interests".

The paying game

"We are taking layers out of the executive rank to get senior leaders closer to important product initiatives," detailed Mattrick in the letter.

"With that in mind, I have asked the leaders to sharpen their focus and properly densify talent to resource teams. These leaders will report to me and form our new executive team with immediate effect."

Mattrick goes on to describe the departure of all three executives as the end of Zynga's "first chapter", though it would appear a fairly substantial amount of money was required to trigger the restructuring round.

Zynga's latest SEC filing – published today – reveals the company paid out $562,500 in severance pay to former COO Ko.

That's on top of "the equivalent of four months of his base salary plus an additional week of pay for each year (or partial year) of service".

Leading the way

Nevertheless, it would appear Mattrick believes such an amount is a worthy price to pay to help "drive Zynga back to strong leadership."

"We are now calibrating against the market opportunity and developing detailed plans to achieve topline growth and improve profitability in the future," adds Mattrick.

"With the above in place, I believe that we will have the best chance to grow, build a world class executive team and culture, establish cadence and really become committed to important priorities and opportunities for our long term success."

The executive departures come little over a week after Zynga announced the closure of four Facebook games "to make way for new and exciting gaming opportunities."

[source: Zynga]