MSN Games Portal Loses Zynga's FarmVille

Zynga's mega-hit social game FarmVille is no longer available at the MSN Games portal, where it appeared last February after a publicized agreement between the farming sim's developer and Microsoft. Though Zynga hasn't yet provided details for why the game was pulled from MSN, this isn't the first time one of the studio's popular titles has disappeared from a site; three months ago, it announced its removal of YoVille from teen-targeted social network Tagged. FarmVille has lost more than 20 million users in the past four months since Facebook enacted changes to its app notification system, but it's still the most popular application or game available on the site, boasting over 60 million monthly active users, according to figures from AppData. Despite the game's popularity on Facebook, Zynga has made several moves to extend the farming sim beyond the social network, setting up a standalone FarmVille site and partnering with other networks like Yahoo and MSN Games earlier this year to integrate the title into their sites. With FarmVille no longer playable on MSN Games and still not available on Yahoo, it's unclear if this plan to bring the title to networks outside of Facebook has benefited Zynga or expanded the game's userbase significantly. Considering recent rumors that Zynga is working with Google to make its titles the cornerstone of the search company's reputed Google Games platform -- speculation strengthened by reports of Google investing between $100 million to $200 million in the developer -- it's likely the studio hasn't given up on this strategy yet.