Zynga finds Facebook gamers reluctant to spend In a week when Facebook hit 1bn members, the leading social gaming company Zynga revealed that players on the social network were still reluctant to spend money. Zynga warned that its third-quarter results would be just as bad as those of the previous quarter - its shares plummeted 40 per cent on the second-quarter news in July and fell nearly 20 per cent on Friday with the latest bombshell. At about $2.30 a share, Zynga is now more than 75 per cent below the $10 price at which it went public last December. That values the company as only being worth its cash on hand, plus the value of its headquarters in San Francisco. But Zynga has more than 300m monthly active players on Facebook and is still generating about $1bn in annual revenues. Analysts at Wedbush Securities speculate that its "evergreen" franchises such as FarmVille and CityVille are seeing sharp revenue declines because Zynga has introduced too many new games - players are playing for free on newer titles, rather than buying virtual goods on the older ones. Facebook said there would be cuts in the fourth quarter, meaning fewer games and probably fewer employees. Analysts have been fretting over a series of departures at the top executive level and it was reported yesterday that the two creators of the successful Words with Friends franchise, acquired by Zynga in 2010, were leaving. That followed Thursday's revelation that Zynga overpaid for OMGPOP, maker of Draw Something, with the company writing down the value of its reported $200m acquisition by around $90m, barely six months after the deal was announced.