Anonymous threaten to take down Zynga over lay-offs

Hacker group Anonymous has now reportedly threatened to take down Zynga, the popular online gaming site and creator of Facebook games such as Farmville and Zynga Poker, because it is unhappy with the tech company’s decision to implement a slew of lay-offs. According to the BusinessInsider, the message also threatens Facebook and states that both sites will be taken down on 5 November. It has also threatned to release Zynga games to the public on that day for free, unless Zynga doesn’t stop its alleged plans for massive layoffs and offshoring of jobs. You can read Anonymous’ complete message on their site here. One of the comments on the Anonymous site also threatens to take down Facebook on 5 November. Remember Zynga’s fate is intrinsically linked to Facebook as a lot of Zynga users access the games via Facebook. It’s not clear though whether Facebook is also under attack from Anonymous over the same issue, or if Anonymous has another axe to grind with the social networking site. It seems a YouTube Video of the same was also posted but Google has taken that down citing policy violation. The video link is here. [caption id=“attachment_506673” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Zynga CEO Mark Pincus in this file photo. AP[/caption] Here’s a part of the message posted by the Hacker group,

We did launch phase 1 of operation maZYNGA with release of the confidential documents leaked from the executives of Zynga. On november the fifth we will release the key to the data files. Remember , Remember the 5TH of November. Zynga customers and Facebook users , We are anonymous. During the last few days anonymous has been targeting Zynga for the outrageous treatment of their employees and their actions against many developers. We have come to believe that this actions of Zynga will result in massive layoff of a thousand people and legal actions against everyone that speaks to the public about this plan. It will also come to end of the US game market as we know it as all this jobs will be replaced in other more convenient financial countries. With a billion dollars cash sitting in a bank we do believe that such actions are an insult to the population and the behaviour of corporations like Zynga must change. Anonymous could not allow this to happen so it’s starting to release confidential documents we have leaked on this plan As we speak we are planning to release also all the games we’ve taken from their servers for free.

Zynga had announced the lay-offs on 23 October and according to this TechCrunch report, it seems most of the employees in the Boston and Austin office weren’t aware of the job cuts. Later that day CEO Mark Pincus confirmed that nearly 5 percent of Zynga’s work-force was going to be laid-off and that it was closing its UK and Japan offices. More on that here.