The social giant recently bought Wild Needle studio for an unknown amount, which developed games for a casual female audience.
Wild Needle is a startup created by Rick Thompson, one of the founders of Playdom, was formed in 2010. The following year, outside investors invested $2.5 million in the company. In March 2012, Wild Needle released its first and last game on iOS – Shoptown Hero social sim.
The project has not gained wide popularity. It was removed from the App Store a few weeks ago.
TechCrunch believes that Zynga paid about $5-20 million for the studio. This is significantly less than she paid for OMGPOP ($180 million), and even less than the amount Gee gave for Funzio studio ($210 million), also founded by Rick Thompson.
UPDATE: The amount of the transaction became known – $3.8 million.