Self-styled hacktivist collective Anonymous is back in the news, this time with threats to release all of Zynga’s games to the public for free if the company doesn’t comply with their demands. That’s all of Zynga’s free-to-play games… for free.
According to Anonymous, Zynga has top secret plans to move their base of operations to their recently acquired offices in Bangalore, India – a move that, so says Anonymous, will “come to end of [sic] the US game market as we know it as all this jobs [sic] will be replaced in other more convenient financial countries [sic].”
Unless Zynga “cease immediately the plan [sic]”, Anonymous will release the key to a data file containing copies of the company’s games allegedly jacked from their private servers on 5 November.
To show that they’re totally serious, Anonymous also “leaked” a bunch of documents that were already in the public record, as well as a memo in similarly bad English that is supposedly the work of Zynga CEO Marc Pincus, and describes the company’s future strategies:
“Following the preliminary announced of this week the final strategy for the next two quarters has been successfully set to delivery by november 23 an additional but of 800 jobs with further raising of new capital from the market to support businesses.”
In a video that has since been removed from YouTube (although a transcript remains over on AnonNews.org), Anonymous delivered its terrifying “#OP maZYNGA” manifesto:
“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.
That being said we will stop the idea of the distribution of such games if Zynga will cease immediately the plan.”
… K.
Does anyone at Anonymous know that there are much bigger problems in the world right now than a gaming company that’s already in major financial trouble laying off some staff? Apparently not, but I suppose when you spend all day on 4chan, your world is a pretty small place.
Source: GamesIndustry
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