The results, needless to say, have been nearly catastrophic for the country as shares fall in value and revenues plummet. And now, according to Kixeye CEO Will Harbin in a conversation with Gamesbeat, “Zynga is burning to the ground and bleeding top talent and instead of trying to fix the problems – better work environment and better products – they are resorting to the only profit centre that has ever really worked for them: their legal department. It is simply another case of Zynga vindictively persecuting a former employee as an individual.”

These statements are in reference to Zynga suing former Cityville GM Alan Patmore, who is now VP of product over at Kixeye. Patmore had admitted to taking 763 files which contained confidential game designs from various teams at Zynga. But considering Kixeye’s themes, would they really be used to gain an advantage on Zynga – one that they don’t really need?

Harbin feels that “given their financial situation, it all feels pretty desperate”, going on to clarify that, “Our games have little in common with the ones that Zynga is known for. We make synchronous, combat strategy games. They make asynchronous clicking games. We have 2 of the top 7 highest grossing games on Facebook. Why on earth would we want to emulate a business that has seen a 75 per cent decline in share price since their debut? According to their S1 their games average $.06 ARPDAU. Our games generate up to 20x that. You do the math.”

Source: GIBiz

Thus, the choice to partner with Hasbro for board game variations of existing Zynga titles is an odd one. But hey, any ship in a storm, right?

Zynga executive vice president of corporate and business development Barry Cottle stated, “We are proud to team up with Hasbro and excited for our players to experience their favorite Zynga games in a new way. Our hope is to enhance relationships through play through our web and mobile social games and now, with the new Hasbro games, we can make those connections even stronger for our players.”

It’s funny, considering how Zynga used to boast about employing psychologists to measure player responses and reactions for increasing revenue and the amount of time they spent in a game. But then there’s that stuff about the pride, and what comes after, yada yada so whatever.