January 2011:

OMGPOP CEO Dan Porter tells us the company will use the money to "aggressively" hire Flash and mobile developers as it re-orients the company around the iPhone and Facebook. Right now the company has 35 people. Founder Charles Forman is now leading mobile games development.

Is he nuts to turn down Zynga? Read on.

Extract:

"The parties acknowledge that FB desires to enable Zynga to build the Zynga Platform on top of the Facebook Platform, and the parties desire to, amongst other goals set forth herein, work together to increase the number of users of each party’s products and services.

The parties further acknowledge that Zynga is making a significant commitment to the Facebook Platform (i.e., using Facebook as the exclusive Social Platform on the Zynga Properties and granting FB certain title exclusivities to Zynga games on the Facebook Platform).

This apparently former Zynga employee is letting loose on the games firm. (He posted a picture of a Zynga termination letter as proof of ID). He says:

No, this isn't payback, or about a grudge. This is just word from someone who's seen what this industry is capable of doing. Good, and Bad. No, I was not under contract, I was full time, offered stock (common shares, not that options bullcrap). I sympathized with contractors on how they were treated, most of the time. No, I was not some IT mangler. I worked for one of their "game studios", basically the front lines where content made it to the masses.

We can't be sure (at the time of bookmarking - Mon 06/02/12 2122GMT) that this 'engineer' is who he says he is, but his comments are worth a read.

A profile of Zynga chief Mark Pincus

"Led by the hard-charging Mr. Pincus, the company operates like a federation of city-states, with autonomous teams for each game, like FarmVille and CityVille. At times, it can be a messy and ruthless war. Employees log long hours, managers relentlessly track progress, and the weak links are demoted or let go."