Anonymous says it’s targeting Zynga because the social game maker is outsourcing jobs to India.
When Zynga announced it was going to downsize 150 employees after a pretty miserable third financial quarter, it can’t have anticipated response from Anonymous, the hacktivist collective. Anonymous has threatened retribution against the social game maker, to take place on November 5th, aka Guy Fawkes or Bonfire Night.
Anonymous believes that the 150 job losses Zynga has announced so far are the tip of the iceberg. Thousands of jobs, Anonymous claims, are at risk; “it will also come to end the US game market as we know it,” according to Anonymous, “as all this jobs will be replaced in other more convenient financial countries.” “More convenient” means Bangalore, India, where Zynga already has a subsidiary.
Anonymous has threatened to release all the confidential Zynga documents in its possession that, it claims, proves Zynga intends to chop US jobs and move development to India. Anonymous has also threatened to release all the games it has taken from Zynga’s servers, for free, if Zynga doesn’t put an immediate halt to its plan.
“With a billion dollars cash sitting in a bank,” Anonymous states, “we do believe that such actions [like Zynga’s alleged plan] are an insult to the population and the behaviour of corporations like Zynga must change.”
Assuming for a moment that Anonymous’ allegations are correct, and Zynga did intend to shut down US development as part of a plan to move those jobs to cheaper locations, it’s difficult to see what Anonymous will actually achieve by this action. Zynga has had nothing but bad financial news ever since its IPO, and its acquisition of Draw Something creator OMGPOP was an unmitigated disaster. Reducing labor costs is a reasonable way for a company hemorrhaging money to decrease expenses and, if that means India, Zynga may prefer to take an Anonymous hit in the short term in the hope of ensuring its long term survival.
Source: Eurogamer
