Social video games services major Zynga announced Tuesday, through a post on its website, the appointment of Frank Gibeau — the ex-vice president of mobile games for Electronic Arts (EA) — as the CEO of the organisation with effect from the coming Monday.
Mark Pincus, the founder and current CEO of Zynga, will remain the executive chairman of the company.
The move is primarily aimed at aligning the company with its mobile gaming focus.
"I returned as CEO last spring to restore Zynga's focus on our vision for social gaming. Zynga was founded with the belief that games could be a core daily activity for everyone. While mobile accessibility has made gaming a leading global industry, games are actually less social today than when they lived on Facebook web," Pincus wrote in an email to the company's employees.
"Think about it. How often do you play mobile games with your friends, other than in Words With Friends? Our opportunity — the Zynga opportunity — is to deliver players innovative experiences that make it easy and fun to play together again."
"I've been building and playing games my whole life. I've always been passionate about making the best games for the biggest audiences. When I joined the gaming industry 25 years ago, a hit was 150,000 copies sold. But we knew interactive entertainment could be so much bigger," Gibeau wrote to the employees.
Zynga has a wide range of games, including Words With Friends, Zynga Poker, FarmVille, CityVille, CSR Racing, Clumsy Ninja, Wizard of Oz Slots and Hit It Rich! Slots.
"While more than 1 billion people have played our games since Zynga's founding, we know we have more work to do to grow our audience. We're committed to doing this by innovating in our live franchises and investing in our new games including our 2016 slate of 10 new mobile releases," Gibeau wrote.
"I recruited Frank seven months ago to become an active board member, and, similar to Bing Gordon, to advise and coach our teams. Frank has a history of developing strong teams and shipping market leading games," Pincus wrote. "He has a proven 25-year track record having helped architect the successful turnaround of Electronic Arts as the President of EA Labels and more recently navigating the company's platform transition efforts as EVP of EA Mobile."
