The shake-out and rebuild at Zynga continues with the San Francisco F2P outfit hiring industry veteran Pete Hawley as its new vice president and general manager.

Hawley was previously CEO of location-based studio Red Robot Labs.

Prior to that he'd worked in senior positions ranging from head of production at Lionhead Studios to developer director at Sony London and executive producer at Criterion, then part of EA.

EA connection

And, it was likely this, combined with a stint as veep of production development at EA UK that makes the Zynga connection given that the company is now headed by EA veterans Don Mattrick as CEO and Clive Downie as COO.

The move comes as part of a widespread restructuring at Zynga during 2014, which on the production side has seen the likes of SVP, mobile Travis Boatman, studio president Steve Chiang and head of acquisitions Terence Fung leave.

Meanwhile Microsoft and Relic veteran Alex Garden joined in April as president of studios.