14 DAY TRIAL // Mitch Lasky, a venture capitalist who has backed such video game projects as League of Legends and Journey, believes that the social platform Facebook is no longer seen as a way to make money by developer and publishers.
The venture capitalist has stated, “Facebook is still a viable platform for independent developers looking to make money on a game, however, companies with aspirations to be larger publishers – Kabam, Kixeye, even Zynga – are moving aggressively off the Facebook platform to mobile and the open Web.”
He also considers that, “Publishers aren’t convinced that the costs of being on Facebook are worth it.”
According to Lasky, the biggest problem is the way Facebook taxes companies even as their games are struggling to get a solid audience, taking 30 percent of the revenue generated by each player and then also asking for up to 20 percent of the rest in order to promote the titles.
These costs are not linked to those companies that run their games on their own infrastructure.
Zynga has already announced that it was encouraging its players to move away from Facebook and use the company’s own website to play their favorite games, even going so far as to implement its own friend system in order to lure customers.
Facebook has long been seen as a solid platform for the sort of casual video games that rely on huge numbers of players who give away their time in order to support gameplay mechanics that see a small percentage paying for upgrades or items.
Zynga, the most successful casual game developer, has also been recently involved in a legal battle with publisher Electronic Arts over claims that The Ville has copied both art elements and mechanics from The Sims Social.
The share price of both Facebook and Zynga has dropped over the past few weeks.