@DoctorWelch said:

@zeekthegeek said:

Insider trading is still a crime regardless of the trading restriction.

It's only insider trading if they base if off knowledge not yet available to the public. By the time they sold their stocks, everyone knew this company was going downhill.

I don't know how you can make that assertion. Apparently there is enough evidence for investigations and at least 1 suit.

Insider trading is serious. If they eventually get charged under the 1934 act they could face 20 years in prison and $5 in fines each.

@Russcat said:

@wumbo3000 said:

What up with Zynga these days?

I don't think it's "these days" really. Haven't they always been considered... well, a bit shady? That's been my impression at least.

Shady in a different way. Initially it was just them plagiarizing other games but this insider trading stuff is a whole new level.

@tourgen said:

@DoctorWelch said:

@zeekthegeek said:

Insider trading is still a crime regardless of the trading restriction.

It's only insider trading if they base if off knowledge not yet available to the public. By the time they sold their stocks, everyone knew this company was going downhill.

I don't know how you can make that assertion. Apparently there is enough evidence for investigations and at least 1 suit.

Insider trading is serious. If they eventually get charged under the 1934 act they could face 20 years in prison and $5 in fines each.

Yes, it's suspicious, and yes, there was always going to be a suit, but neither of those things actually means they did anything wrong. So yes, there could have been insider trading, I'm not saying there definitively wasn't, I'm just saying that if they simply sold their stocks because they knew what everyone else knew (which is what the evidence is currently pointing to), then they did nothing wrong.

Scramble with Friends is a good game, and I'm still playing Draw Something although the big red Zynga splash screen makes me sad.

So... they did okay with monetized Boggle and Pictionary at least.

@darkdragonmage99 said:

Dirty pool very much so dirty pool

Zynga pissed in their pool.

See, they could've gotten away with it had two of them not been so heinous and greedy as to cash in half their stock. Of course your dumb ass is getting caught when hundreds of millions of dollars are involved.

@Alex: Keep us up to date about this story, if you can - i'd be quite interested to see how it develops.

@DoctorWelch: There may have been a perception out there that Zynga was on the wane in some circles but if you look at their stock price on Yahoo then it was still strong until after the executives under investigation dumped their stock. The real problem is that the execs were able to push forward the date they could sell stock to before their Q1 results were made public. From the outside it looks an awful lot like they saw the preliminary Q1 results and offloaded their stock based on the fact those results would be received negatively.

@DoctorWelch said:

@tourgen said:

@DoctorWelch said:

@zeekthegeek said:

Insider trading is still a crime regardless of the trading restriction.

It's only insider trading if they base if off knowledge not yet available to the public. By the time they sold their stocks, everyone knew this company was going downhill.

I don't know how you can make that assertion. Apparently there is enough evidence for investigations and at least 1 suit.

Insider trading is serious. If they eventually get charged under the 1934 act they could face 20 years in prison and $5 in fines each.

Yes, it's suspicious, and yes, there was always going to be a suit, but neither of those things actually means they did anything wrong. So yes, there could have been insider trading, I'm not saying there definitively wasn't, I'm just saying that if they simply sold their stocks because they knew what everyone else knew (which is what the evidence is currently pointing to), then they did nothing wrong.

I think the other party in this suit is stating that zynga misinformed their shareholders on their current users base (profit). To which they are claiming Zynga users were much lower then stated following that they did not informed them that Zynga stocks were falling and being lead to believe stocks would have growth later on.

Anyone who invested significant money into Zynga is an idiot.

@grbear said:

@DoctorWelch: There may have been a perception out there that Zynga was on the wane in some circles but if you look at their stock price on Yahoo then it was still strong until after the executives under investigation dumped their stock. The real problem is that the execs were able to push forward the date they could sell stock to before their Q1 results were made public. From the outside it looks an awful lot like they saw the preliminary Q1 results and offloaded their stock based on the fact those results would be received negatively.

I'm pretty sure they dumped them immediately following the information.

@phantomzxro said:

I think the other party in this suit is stating that zynga misinformed their shareholders on their current users base (profit). To which they are claiming Zynga users were much lower then stated following that they did not informed them that Zynga stocks were falling and being lead to believe stocks would have growth later on.

Yeah, that's just insider trading, which is the obvious lawsuit. The point is that there needs to be proof that they knew something the public didn't, and as of right now there is no proof of that, which is why there is an investigation.

Good to see they finally revealed their true colors as an opportunist pyramid scheme.

@DoctorWelch: They sold their stock on the 3rd of April. The results came out on the 27th.

a family friend has a relative working at zynga and I always tell them they're evil theives with no brains, no one believes me thinks I'm trying to insult someone or something...But it's true. Can't wait to see this all go down.

Goldman Sachs involved in shady Wall St business. Why does this seem so familiar?

The dumbest guys in the room.

Goldman Sachs involved in shady Wall St business. Why does this seem so familiar?

Saw this coming

Seems like people that don't use facebook have to let people know they don't. As for Zynga I don't understand the hate.

I still play Word with Friends with my girlfriend. Oh, and Zynga is still evil.

@courage_wolf said:

Goldman Sachs involved in shady Wall St business. Why does this seem so familiar?

for a good time...

https://twitter.com/GSElevator

If only we could remove corruption.

When your CFO dumps half his shares in the company you work for its time to update your Linkdn profile!

Not that many game companies would be super eager to hire a former game developer at Zynga. Unless said companies only made shabby clones of established IP's.

Stupidly done to get caught, scumbags otherwise.

Too bad we don't just round up Wall Street and burn it, burn it all to the ground!

Still a dick move.

Sucks that the only positive thing Mark Pincus has contributed to the world is that picture. That guy is obviously intelligent, but he uses that intelligence for every scummy trick in the book. (Would not be surprised if he becomes an arms dealer by next year.)

@jaks: If I recall correctly, Soren Johnson (sp) currently works at Zynga. The Civ IV creative lead...preeeetty sure there's quite a few companies who would love to have him. I suspect a good amount of people employed by Zynga are similar, if not as well-known or obvious for an example like this. People take jobs like this all the time for various reasons, lots of them involving "well, I get paid more here", and this isn't generally considered all bad. Dunno why it would be different in this case.

being greedy will haunt you in the end

So all those shady-looking facebook games were made by a company run by a bunch of shady dudes. It kind of justifies that skin-crawly feeling I always got whenever I saw people playing Farmville or Mafia Wars.

My instincts aren't that bad I guess.

OH MAN THIS SUCKS I HAVE ALL MY MONEY IN SUPERGRAPE FUTURES RIGHT NOW

UPDATE: Schappert has been stripped of gaming oversight duties.

Guess Kessler's going to have to mortgage the farm.

You know who you never hear about anymore? PopCap.

no matter how much $ u got, u always need more $_$

We're doing Zynga stories now?

"But the guys at the top, who saw what was coming down the pipe, got to cash out"

He threw a wish in a well. Don't ask him, he'll never tell.

Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.

I officially gave up on Words With Friends today. I got tired of it not accepting actual words while my girlfriend smashed me with 73 point gibberish. And Draw Something is just broken.
As for the news story. If Goldman Sachs had a part in it, well they have already proven they are above and beyond the laws of the land. As have most of the other investment houses. The government isn't really interested in reining them in with proper penalties so they have been given 'permission' to play with your money in any way they see fit. Usually in ways that benefit them and thier friends. Like CEO's of large companies.

@Cretaceous_Bob said:

We're doing Zynga stories now?

were at the end of the biggest nothing going on streak in a while, cant blame them for digging deep on content.

Anyone else getting the same deja vu feeling like the casual games market bubble is about to burst kinda like the web bubble did in the 90s?

So it's come to this....

My Girlfriend will play with you Alex but she uses websites to look for words

@StompboxRebel said:

...so they have been given 'permission' to play with your money in any way they see fit. Usually in ways that benefit them and thier friends.

Business With Friends <blink>now with new Trading feature!</blink> :)

All this shady trading stuff is just really obnoxious. These guys should have the book thrown at them completely. They knew before anyone that the bubble was about to burst, rushed through an IPO and then cashed out as much as they could.