Booyah Lays Off 13 Employees After Traffic for Nightclub City, MyTown Fades
Booyah, an Accel and Kleiner-backed mobile and social gaming startup, laid off 13 people after early breakout hits like MyTown and Nightclub City faded among mobile and Facebook users.
“We’ve recently made strategic moves internally to better align our needs with our vision and product development goals that we’re very excited about,” chief executive Keith Lee tells us. “We should have lots of cool products to talk about in the next few weeks.” The employees were mostly in sales.
Founded by three gaming veterans who were behind games like Activision Blizzard’s Diablo III, Booyah scored early funding from Kleiner Perkins’ mobile-focused iFund. The company experimented with mobile apps that let users share life achievements then shifted gears into the hot space of location-based social networking with MyTown, a Monopoly-like mobile game that let players own their favorite nearby venues and earn virtual rent. With MyTown’s momentum, Booyah was able to attract $20 million in funding from Accel Partners as the venture firm looked for a bet in the space.
After that, the company started eyeing the Facebook platform and launched Nightclub City, an electronica-oriented social game that let players manage a virtual nightclub. Between the music, art and thoughtfulness of game mechanics, we thought it was one of the best games of last year. But that game has also declined in monthly and daily active users as the company grapples with the same hits-driven nature of the business that other social gaming competitors have confronted.
February 1st, 2011 at 10:43 am
[...] Continue reading on Inside Mobile Apps. To dig deeper into the social gaming market, check out our new report: Inside Virtual Goods: The [...]
February 2nd, 2011 at 8:09 am
I think the problem facing gaming on platforms like FaceBook is the money required to play in the space.
If you look at how much Zynga invest in advertising on FB , its not trivial.
Many of the free viral channels have been cut off or reduced , leaving game devs with few other options except advertising.
This suits Facebook perfectly. they get the ad revenue and 30 % generated via Facebook credits for in game transactions.
Personally I think its going to be tough for unfunded game devs to survive and prosper here.
February 3rd, 2011 at 11:40 am
[...] ПоделитьсяКомпания Booyah уволила 13 сотрудников, что директор фирмы Кит Ли называет [...]
February 11th, 2011 at 9:13 am
SKtelecom Americas is hiring and doing exciting things in the mobile apps space. These people should check out our website http://www.skta.com and send their resumes to jobs@skta.com. Anyone else l;ooking for an interesting opportunity in our exciting incubator company is welcome to as well.
February 24th, 2011 at 3:15 pm
[...] After layoffs earlier this year, Booyah is looking to blend the best elements of its two biggest hits so far in a forthcoming social-mobile game called Nightclub City DJ Rivals. [...]
April 9th, 2012 at 7:07 am
[...] – Booyah: The mobile social gaming developer Booyah has laid off 13 employees, mostly in sales, after two of its most popular games, MyTown and Nightclub City, saw declines in their user numbers. (via InsideMobileApps) [...]