Zynga Opening Seattle Studio

Continuing its rapid expansion, FarmVille company Zynga is opening a Seattle office and hiring a team of web engineers for the new location, according to recently-posted job listings. "Zynga is building a world-class team of web engineers in Seattle!" the company posted in its online job listings board. "We are hiring at all levels from associate engineers to architects." The social game studio confirmed its plans to establish Zynga Seattle to VC news site VentureBeat. The area is also home to a number of other major video game developers and publishers, such as Nintendo of America, Microsoft, Sony Online Entertainment, PopCap, Bungie, Valve Software and others. Zynga already has more than 1,200 employees spread out across at least 13 studios around the world. It also recently made plans to move its San Francisco headquarters to a larger building that once served as the main office for Sega of America. The developer has acquired six studios in the past six months: XPD Media in Beijing, Unoh in Tokyo, Challenge Games in Austin, Conduit Labs in Boston, Dextrose in Frankfurt, and most recently Bonfire Studios in Dallas -- an SEC filing for the last purchase suggests that Zynga paid at least $6.3 million for Bonfire.