EA: Playfish Userbase Growing Despite Shrinkage With Top Facebook Games

While the majority of Facebook's most popular games have lost millions of users in the past few months, Electronic Arts says its recently acquired PlayFish studio has managed to grow its userbase. Since Facebook enacted changes to its application notification system four months ago to curtail the amount of "app spam" many users have complained about, the social network's most popular titles that depended on notifications for their viral growth lost a significant amount of monthly active users. The most popular app on Facebook, Zynga's FarmVille, alone has lost more than 20 million users since last March. According to EA, the social network's top applications have lost an average of around 22 percent of their userbases in recent months. Despite that, the publisher says PlayFish, the London-based social gaming studio it purchase last year for $300 million, has grown its business by 5 percent -- partly due to the recent launch of two popular titles: FIFA Superstars and My Empire. "We've been very pleased with the PlayFish acquisition," said EA Interactive's Barry Cottle in an investor briefing earlier today. "PlayFish is right now the number two player in the marketplace and the only one that's been growing in the past four months."