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Anonymous warns of attack on Zynga

Hackers claiming an affiliation to hacktivist collective Anonymous have threatened to take down Zynga.
Written by Charlie Osborne, Contributing Writer

In reprisal for the "outrageous treatment" of its employees, Zynga may be the next project on Anonymous' list.

anonymous zynga facebook attack

Following the social games company laying off 5 percent of its staff, closing offices and sunsetting 13 game titles, the cost-cutting exercise has resulted in roughly 150 members of staff being laid off out of Zynga's 2,900 employees. The firm is attempting to save between $15 and $20 million. 

Hackers claiming an affiliation to collective Anonymous have taken umbradge to this, however, and have threatened to target the company through a new project called #OP MaZynga.

The YouTube hosted video message claimed that attacks on both Facebook and Zynga would happen on November 5. Although the announcement was quickly taken down due to "YouTube's policy on depiction of harmful activities", the video said:

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.

The group also released a number of 'leaked' documents on the alleged future workforce cuts -- quickly taken offline -- which claim that Zynga is planning to lay off more staff and rely more heavily on outsourcing to India. In addition, the hackers say that they plan to release games stolen from Zynga's servers for free unless the firm "changes its mind" on the alleged cost-cutting strategy. 

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