Ponzi, Inc. is now permanently closed for business

This hasn't been a good week for Facebook games staying open, and Ponzi, Inc. is the next one to be closed for good. Ponzi is the creation of Challenge Games, an Austin-based studio that was recently acquired by social gaming giant Zynga. Ponzi has been slowly trailing off in activity over the past few months, and as of yesterday had around 221,000 monthly players. The staff who worked on Ponzi had the following to say on the game's Facebook page:

    Dear Ponzi Players,

    In October 2009, Challenge Games launched Ponzi, Inc., a fast paced tycoon game that pokes fun at corporate life.

    Earlier this month, in real world corporate news, Challenge Games became part of the Zynga Game Network. We're thrilled to have the opportunity to bring our games to a wider audience, but we have had to make hard choices about where to focus our energies. As of June 29th, Ponzi, Inc. will lock the office doors for the final time and close up shop.

    During its peak over one million people logged in to play Ponzi, Inc., and built their home offices into global corporate empires complete with Unicorn Palaces and Death Rays.

    Players who have made purchases in Ponzi, Inc. within the past two months will have an equivalent value credited to them in FrontierVille, on or by July 31, 2010.

    We'd like to extend a special thanks to our community - players and friends - from all of us on the Ponzi, Inc. team. Your passion and commitment helped make the game great fun. We look forward to seeing you playing our other games.

    Sincerely,
    The Ponzi Inc. Team


Earlier this month, we wrote up an article claiming that the best thing about Zynga's acquisition of Challenge Games was Ponzi. Unfortunately, the revenue must not have been high enough on the game to continue supporting it. What is even more scary is the fact that Challenge Games' other title, Warstorm, is doing equally as poor. It has been in a downward slide as well, and only has about 250,000 monthly actives. Will Warstorm weather the storm?

Zynga hits Warstorm, three other games with the firey axe Sept. 30

A fiery axe laced with sadness and destruction, at that. Mafia Wars Maniac reports that Zynga, the creator of some of the most popular games on Facebook, will close Warstorm for good come Sept. 30 along with Scramble, Pathwords and Word Twist. In fact, Warstorm isn't even accepting new players anymore during its final breaths on Facebook. The news broke in a post by Warstorm forum moderator Cerulean Master, asking players to ring out Warstorm with a bang by sharing their memories.

Luckily, Cerulean also provided a FAQ to help us understand just what's up. The existing 11,126 (yikes!) daily Warstorm players can access the game right until it closes forever on Sept. 30, while new players simply won't be allowed. And for players who paid good money to enjoy their fantasy card battles, Zynga will transfer any virtual currency purchases made within the last 90 days to a game of their choice, and the company will add another 10 percent to that number.

Warstorm refugees will also be offered bonus packages for joining Zynga's better more popular games like CityVille, FarmVille and Empires & Allies. While this information pertains specifically to Warstorm, we imagine that players of Scramble, Word Twist and Pathwords will be offered the same treatment. (Zynga's forums are under maintenance as of this writing.)

Honestly, and no offense to you super fans out there, we can see why Zynga would close games that are dwarfed by its hits. (Not to mention that Words With Friends has become the defacto word game on Facebook.) This will be the second closure in just over a month. Near the end of August, Zynga closed the digital doors to Fashion Wars and two other games that were performing poorly. And not just poorly for a Zynga game--any Facebook game.

If anything, these closures will allow Zynga to focus more resources on making sure its flagship games continue to succeed and to make more money machines popular games. It's a shame to see these games go (I thought Warstorm was quite impressive, personally), but at least the company is providing players with options to stick around. Perhaps as Zynga trims the fat, we'll see even better games come from the international studio, like Adventure World.

Are you sad to see Warstorm and these other Zynga games go? Are you satisfied with how the company is addressing the time you spent in these games? Sound off in the comments. Add Comment.