Ex-Zynga games chief joins Warner Bros. to oversee global game dev

Game industry veteran Steven Chiang has taken an executive position with Batman: Arkham Knight publisher Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment to oversee the company's console and mobile game development efforts worldwide.

As executive vice president of Worldwide Production and Studios Chiang will have his hand in both premium and free-to-play game production efforts at WBIE, a notable role in light of his earlier work at Zynga as studio president.

Chiang left Zynga in 2014, but while there he spent years overseeing development of the firm's F2P games on Facebook and mobile devices. That experience, as well as his prior experience at Electronic Arts in a variety of management roles, is cited as a prominent factor in his hire.

"Steven will help keep us on pace to deliver on our increased focus of developing free-to-play mobile games and growing our business in Asia, so we can continue to successfully compete as a leading games company," stated WBIE president David Haddad in a press release announcing Chiang's new role.

While he's been working as a producer and an executive for many years, Chiang got his start in the game industry as an engineer. He has programming credits on a number of memorable Visual Concepts games from the '90s, including WeaponLord for the Super Nintendo.