Monday, March 23, 2015

Zynga to Shutter Six Games – Including Pioneer Trail

Pioneer Trail

Mobile and social game company Zynga has announced the closure of six games, including Pioneer Trail. Formerly called FrontierVille, the homestead-building and farming game set in the uncharted West was one of Zynga’s most popular, attracting tens of millions of monthly active players who wished to try their hand at living a more rustic life out on the trail.

Like other Zynga Facebook games, Pioneer Trail’s popularity (and player numbers) fell drastically in recent years, so this closure announcement isn’t necessarily surprising. First spotted by CEGamers, Pioneer Trail will close on April 30, 2015.

A statement on the game’s Facebook fan page reads:

Thanks for being a great member of the Pioneer Trail community — we loved delivering you a fun experience. We don’t take the decision to sunset our games lightly but we made the tough decision to shutdown Pioneer Trail so our team of game makers can put their passion, energy and time into developing new games.

In addition to Pioneer Trail, Zynga has also announced an April 30 closure date for five more games, including some mobile titles: Zynga Slots, Duck Dynasty Slots, Riches of Olympus, Ayakashi: Ghost Guild and FarmVillage (a title launched by Zynga China at the end of Q4 2014).

This news follows the CityVille closure announcement from early March. Like these games, the city-building Facebook game will close on April 30.

These game closures will allow Zynga to focus its attention on the “six to ten” new games it expects to launch this year, according to a recent earnings call. This lineup includes Dawn of Titans, from its NaturalMotion studio, and Empires & Allies, a reimagined version of the previously shuttered Facebook game of the same name.

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