Zynga Takes Steps To Remove Scams From Games

Well that didn't take long. We outlined the not-so-ethical ways that the big social gaming startups are generating revenue through lead gen scams and subscriptions through a series of posts over the last week. Starting with Social Games: How The Big Three Make Millions and Scamville: The Social Gaming Ecosystem Of Hell . We also threw in some comments by other companies and a former scammer , and a quote from Zynga that 1/3 of their revenues come from offers, much of which are scams. We thought this would be a fight that would take months to end successfully, and we thought that only Facebook or MySpace would make the move to clean up their own platforms. But boy am I surprised today to see Zynga, the worst of the offenders, admit publicly to the problem and take quick steps to change. CEO Mark Pincus says: Michael Arrington posted over the weekend about CPA offers within social games and questioned why facebook, myspace, zynga and others would expose these to our users. He raises good points about ‘scammy’ advertisers and the bad user experience they create. I agree with him and others that some of these offers misrepresent and hurt our industry. Later in the post he also says: