Conduit Labs Bought By Zynga, Shuttering Games

Social games company Zynga announced its acquisition of Cambridge-based Conduit Labs, which will now operate as Zynga Boston and is in the process of closing down its Facebook games, Music Pets and Super Dance. Financial terms for the deal were not disclosed. Founded in 2007, Conduit Labs initially set out to create LoudCrowd, a rhythm-based title with social network and virtual world elements, but abandoned that project to focus on Facebook releases, closing the online game late last month. The studio saw some success with its Facebook titles, as Music Pets managed to attract 1.2 million monthly active players last April, but the music game's audience has since dropped to only around 360,000 monthly users, according to AppData. It's current most popular title, Super Dance, has about 470,000 monthly players. Zynga Boston says that while it saw the most revenue yet from its games last month, it has failed to make its products "commercially successful enough" and will be terminating Music Pets and Super Dance so it can focus on its next product. "We had to make the decision to focus on what was working," explains Conduit Labs' founder and CEO Nabeel Hyatt, who will head Zynga Boston. "And we think once you see what we've got next, you'll agree it was the right choice." Along with its new Boston branch, Zynga currently has development studios in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin, Baltimore, Bangalore, Beijing, and a joint venture in Tokyo with Japanese telecommunications and media corporation Softbank -- which invested some $150 million into the company two months ago. "Boston is an epicenter for technology and has a strong talent market, making it an ideal location for us to expand operations," says Zynga's SVP of Games Mike Verdu. "As one of the most prominent social game companies in Boston, the Conduit team shares a similar culture and drive with Zynga, and together we anticipate great successes from our new studio."