DrawSomething players drop 30% since Zynga purchase

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It’s not a pretty picture.

The number of daily players for DrawSomething, a game developed by OMGPOP, has plunged 30% in the last 30 days on Facebook. The count has dropped to just over 10 million on Thursday from a little more than 14.5 million daily players at the beginning of April, according to AppData.

This likely is not welcome news for Zynga Inc., which paid $180 million, plus an additional $30 million if certain milestones are reached, for OMGPOP in March. The high price comes largely on the strength of DrawSomething, though OMGPOP has created more than 30 other games, none of which have drawn as many players.

Zynga declined to comment on the decline.

Stock analysts have expressed reservations about OMGPOP’s ability to deliver on its princely acquisition price. ‘Zynga must improve monetization and retain gamers as the initial ‘buzz’ of the game wears off over the coming months in order to justify the ... price tag,’ Doug Creutz, an analyst with Cowen & Co., wrote in a note to investors in April.

Though traffic is not a perfect indicator of how much money a game is generating, a decline in players does mean that the pool of potential customers is shrinking. As a result, Wall Street investors like to keep close tabs on the ‘daily active users’ charted above.

But the chart shows only part of the picture for DrawSomething, specifically the Facebook part. It does not count the game’s performance on mobile devices, where DrawSomething is equally if not more popular.

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