OMGPOP Losing Its Appeal After Zynga’s $200 Million Acquisition

OMGPOP scored a huge victory for itself on February 6th when it launched the uber-popular iPad and iPhone app Draw Something and then just seven weeks later managed to rack up 35 million users and more than 1 billion ad impressions per day.

After that success the company was quickly and unsuspectingly purchased by app developer Zynga for $200 million, an acquisition that may have been premature as the app has appeared to have lost some of its original appeal.

The Atlantic Wire reports that since the buyout the app has dropped from 15 million to 10 million users, although the number of monthly users has stayed consistent.

As a player of Draw Something I was personally pulled into the allure of a “pictionary” type game, however after several days I noticed the exact same words appearing repeatedly which caused me to nearly abandon the game completely, many of my friends also said the repeated words caused them to stop playing Draw Something on a regular basis.

While the move may have appeared to be a $200 million mistake, Zynga still managed to acquire the OMGPOP team and they have proven that their formula towards making iPhone and iPad based games can be successful which could lead to further successes for Zynga in the future.

I recently saw on the Zynga page that new words were added to the system, perhaps users just needed some incentive but only time will tell if Zynga managed to jump the gun a bit too early on a $200 million acquisition.