Zynga is sinking fast as yet another high-profile employee leaves the company.
Brian Reynolds, the company's chief game designer and the founder of its Baltimore studio, is the latest to jump ship.
The news was confirmed by three different sources, who all told Polygon of the departure.
"Brian has a long history in the game industry and has been a great partner to the creative leaders at Zynga," said Steve Chiang, Zynga's president of games in a prepared statement. "I want to thank him for his leadership of the Zynga Baltimore studio in the design and development of 'FrontierVille,' which brought many innovations to social gaming. We appreciate Brian's contribution and we're proud of the deep bench of creative leaders who are leading the next wave of game innovation at Zynga. We wish Brian the best in his next chapter."
Reynolds himself validated the report by tweeting, "Yes I'm officially leaving Zynga after 3 3/4 great years. Back soon..."
Originally hired by Zynga to help the company reach out to different segments of the gaming market, Reynold's focus was mainly on strategy games. As founder of Zynga East in Baltimore, he helped develop "FrontierVille and "CityVille 2."
Before joining Zynga, Reynolds worked on titles such as "Civilization 2" and "Alpha Centauri."
The last year has not been kind to Zynga. According to Bloomberg, the social gaming company has seen its stock collapse 74 percent since it first became publically traded in December 2011. The company has struggled to grow beyond Facebook, even blaming the social networking site for its failure to meet earnings estimates back in July.
What's worse, however, is that Reynolds is only the latest in a long string of departures. He joins "Words With Friends" co-creators David and Paul Bettner, chief operating officer John Schappert, chief crative officer Mike Verdu, OMGPOP chief revenue officer Wilson Griegel, chief financial officer David Wehner, and, amazingly, even more.
It's been a long, hard fall for a company that was once a potential trailblazer in the gaming industry. Before it was revealed that Reynolds had left, Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter predicted that Zynga would beat expectations and post higher earnings than anticipated. Not only that, but he said that the promotion of the company's current crop of managers will restore investor confidence. Who knows if that'll still be the case after today.
