After Zynga Confirms 18 Percent Layoffs, It Lowers Guidance in All-In Mobile Move 
 
 Zynga confirmed it was laying off 18 percent of its workforce — which represents 520 employees — in a bid to reduce costs, as it seeks to drastically restructure its troubled business. 
 
 The move today will affect every part of the San Francisco social gaming company, cutting $80 million in staff costs for its 2,900 current workers. It will also include the closing of its offices in New York, Los Angeles and Dallas, as well as other infrastructure costs, adding to the total expense reduction. 
 
 Zynga continues to have big offices in San Francisco; Beijing, China; and Bangalore, India, as well as several small units across the U.S. (such as Seattle and San Diego). 
 
 Sources said that severance benefits will extend for several months and include some acceleration of stock options. 
 
 In addition, Zynga has now said in a press release that it is downgrading its investor guidance for the second quarter with results at the lower end of what Wall Street has been expecting. 
 
 After a rocky IPO and trying to cope with rapid changes in its core businesses, Zynga has been trying to refocus the company’s franchises and network on the shift to mobile and a narrowing of focus at the company. 
 
 That refocusing will now have a big impact on Zynga’s financial performance. For Q2, the company had previously said its “bookings” — related to sales of in-game virtual-good purchases and advertising — would be in the $180 million to $190 million range. Today, Zynga said results would now be in the lower half of that range. 
 
 In addition, its GAAP net loss for the quarter will be higher than expected, rising from a loss of $26.5 million to $36.5 million to a loss of between $28.5 million and $39 million. 
 
 All other metrics are expected to remain the same, including: Revenue ($225 million to $235 million); earnings per share (a loss of three to five cents); adjusted EBITDA (break even to a loss of $10 millon); and non-GAAP EPS (a loss of three to four cents). 
 
 Wall Street is not reacting well to the bad news. Zynga’s shares have dropped from 11 to 12 percent since AllThingsD.com broke the news of the layoffs. It is now at about $3 a share, giving the company a market valuation of $2.4 billion. Trading for Zynga was briefly halted, before the company confirmed the cost cuts. ||||| Zynga Inc. (ZNGA) sued the maker of the “Bang With Friends” casual sex Internet application, claiming it infringes Zynga’s trademark for its “with friends” family of games. 
 
 Bang With Friends Inc., which makes an application matching Facebook friends anonymously for casual sex, registered its Internet domain name last year, according to the complaint filed yesterday federal court in San Francisco. 
 
 The company “selected the name ‘Bang With Friends’ for its casual sex matchmaking app with Zynga’s game trademarks fully in mind,” according to the complaint. The name infringes a trademark covering games such as “Words With Friends” and “Chess With Friends,” according to the filing. 
 
 Zynga seeks a court order barring the company from using the name “Bang With Friends” in connection with any social-networking applications in the U.S. and unspecified damages. 
 
 “As a technology company, we take intellectual property seriously, and will evaluate the case in detail once we receive a copy,” Bang With Friends said in an e-mailed statement. 
 
 More than a dozen top managers have left Zynga since the company’s December 2011 initial public offering, as waning demand for its games on Facebook Inc. (FB)’s network has sent the shares down more than 70 percent, eroding the value of equity-based compensation. 
 
 ‘Mafia Wars’ 
 
 At the time of its IPO, Zynga was the largest maker of games played on Facebook, with popular titles such as “CityVille,” “FarmVille” and “Mafia Wars.” The IPO raised $1 billion, the biggest debut by a U.S. Internet company since Google Inc. raised $1.9 billion in its 2004 IPO, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. 
 
 “Zynga filed a lawsuit to stop blatant infringement of its valuable ‘With Friends’ brand,” Renee Lawson, the company’s deputy general counsel, said in an e-mailed statement. “Zynga is compelled to file suit to prevent further consumer confusion and protect its intellectual property rights against infringement.” 
 
 The case is Zynga Inc. v. Bang With Friends Inc., 13-03517, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco). 
 
 To contact the reporter on this story: Joel Rosenblatt in San Francisco at jrosenblatt@bloomberg.net 
 
 To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Hytha at mhytha@bloomberg.net. ||||| SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Zynga Inc. priced its initial public offering at $10 per share on Thursday afternoon — the high end of the expected range for the deal, signaling strong investor demand for the maker of social games. 
 
 Reuters Zynga CEO Mark Pincus introduced new games at the company’s San Francisco headquarters on Oct. 11. 
 
 Zynga ZNGA, +10.45% will begin trading on the Nasdaq on Friday morning under the ticker symbol ZNGA. 
 
 Late Thursday, the company priced 100 million shares at $10 per share. It had previously filed papers with the Securities and Exchange Commission to sell its shares at a range of $8.50-$10 apiece. 
 
 Zynga is the latest in a series of high-profile Internet IPOs this year that has included social network LinkedIn Corp. LNKD, +1.19% and online daily deals site Groupon Inc. GRPN, +1.67% Social networking giant Facebook Inc. is expected to debut next year, though some rumors have indicated that the company could make its initial filing within the next few weeks. 
 
 Scott Sweet of IPO Boutique said his clients were surprised with the Zynga pricing, given that past deals in the Internet and social networking space priced above their filed range. 
 
 “We were expecting above-range pricing. Certainly this deal had more demand than Jive Software,” Sweet said, referring to a provider of social networking software that debuted earlier this week after pricing its IPO at $12 — above its expected range of $8-$10. 
 
 Sweet added, however, that Zynga took “a sensible approach” in not trying to get too much money too soon — leaving the door open for a possible secondary offering down the road. He said he was “very pleased” with the pricing. 
 
 Underwriters for Zynga have been granted an additional 15 million shares to cover over-allotments. Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs are the lead underwriters on the deal, which also includes participation from B. of A. Merrill Lynch, Barclays, J.P. Morgan and Allen & Co. 
 
 The company expects to have about 699.4 million total shares outstanding following the debut, which includes Class B and C shares that won’t be offered to the public. 
 
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 The IPO price of $10 per share gives the company a total market value of just under $7 billion. Previous valuation targets leaked to media outlets had the number around $10 billion. 
 
 That puts Zynga above many traditional game publishers, and in line with Electronic Arts ERTS , which has a current market cap just under $7 billion. Activision Blizzard ATVI, +1.05% remains the largest company in the videogame space, with a market cap around $13.5 billion. 
 
 Zynga makes games played primarily over Facebook. Popular titles have included “CityVille,” “FarmVille” and “Mafia Wars.” The company has about 227 million average monthly users who play the games for free, with a small portion who purchase items through micro-transactions within the games that makes up the bulk of the company’s revenue. 
 
 For the nine months ended Sept. 30, Zynga claimed total revenue of $828.9 million — more than double the $401.7 million in revenue from the same period last year. Net income for the recent period was $30.7 million, down from $47.6 million in the comparable period thanks to a sharp rise in marketing and R&D expenses. 
 
 Zynga plans to use the proceeds from the offering for general corporate purposes and possibly acquisitions. About $83.6 million will go toward satisfying tax-withholding obligations related to the vesting of restricted stock units.
– As a publicly held company, Zynga, the gaming company perhaps best known for FarmVille and Words With Friends, isn't doing so hot. Its market value of $9 billion in oh-so-distant 2011 has dropped to $2 billion, and the blog Halting Problem says that after factoring in substantial cash reserves, analysts peg its real worth at closer to $500 million. That's a notable sum—it's less than what sources tell Halting Problem is the estimated real estate value of the company's San Francisco headquarters: $540 million. Zynga bought the 668,000-square-foot, seven-story building for $228 million in 2012, and the San Francisco Chronicle reported in February that it was looking to sell the building but then lease it back. As the Chronicle now puts it: "So yeah, Zynga is going from owner to renter with a building that's worth more than it is. How San Francisco." Still, all is not lost. On Thursday, Zynga's shares closed 11% higher thanks to first-quarter revenues beating expectations, reports CNBC. It's not that the earnings were all that strong—they simply broke even, which is better than the expected loss. And while Zynga boasted an increase in ad sales, its customer base declined—an ongoing problem for a company whose bread and butter dates back to the Facebook desktop era but has yet to strike gold with mobile gaming apps. The company says it has released four games this year and will release six more throughout the year, including one about Willy Wonka, reports Adweek. (Zynga once sued a hookup app.)