Zynga announces closure of Zynga Slingo on Facebook

Image via Zynga

Zynga has quietly announced the closure of Zynga Slingo on Facebook, scheduled for later this month. While Zynga Slingo has over 3.5 million monthly active users, this move comes as no surprise, as RealNetworks purchased the Slingo name and brand at the end of July for $15.6 million, according to TechCrunch.

Zynga Slingo players are being offered a one-time compensation package in another Zynga game of their choice: Zynga Poker, FarmVille 2 or Bubble Safari. Players must already have existing accounts in the game of their choosing before the package can be applied. The contents of those packages have yet to be revealed.

Premium purchases (and real money invested) in the slots-meets-bingo game will also disappear when the game closes on August 27, so users are encouraged to use them / it now, while the game is still available.

RealNetworks purchased Slingo as part of its continued push into social casino gaming. The company launched GameHouse Casino Plus on August 1, bringing large-scale, real money sweepstakes to Facebook for the first time. Players of that game have a chance to win $100,000 each and every month, simply by playing the game and earning tickets, and then turning those tickets into contest entries.

While no specific details for new Slingo games have been released, the company did confirm it was working on new versions of Slingo for Facebook, iPhone, iPad and Android.

“Slingo has been a successful, compelling product on every major games platform over the past 15 years,” said Rich Roberts, CEO of Slingo, via a company release. “By joining forces with RealNetworks, we look forward to taking Slingo to the next level. We’re thrilled to be joining RealNetworks’ GameHouse division.”

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CastleVille: Play Zynga Slingo for free energy and hypercrafts

It may be taking a while, but another Zynga Slingo promotion has finally launched on Facebook; this time, in CastleVille. Luckily, if you've already completed the matching promotions in FarmVille or Hidden Chronicles, you'll be ready to go for these free prizes as well, as all three promotions require the same thing: that you earn at least 30 Medals in total in Zynga Slingo.

There are a maximum of five Medals available in each of the early levels in Zynga Slingo, which combines slot machines and bingo boards. It's quite simple to earn these 30 Medals, but also rather time consuming if you don't get lucky early on. Either way, once you earn those 30 Medals in Zynga Slingo, you'll be able to go back to your Kingdom in CastleVille to receive your prizes. You'll receive 30 free energy, along with three Hypercrafts. If you're unfamiliar, a Hypercraft will allow you to speed up the crafting process of one of your buildings by an hour each.

We expect other promotions to launch in games like CityVille or even Cafe World over time, and we'll make sure to let you know if and when that happens. In the meantime, why not head over to Zynga Slingo and earn those 30 Medals so that you can earn a slew of prizes across CastleVille and Zynga's other games?

Will you play Zynga Slingo for items in CastleVille? Did you receive your free items in other Zynga games as well? Sound off in the comments.

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Zynga Slingo tops the list of fastest-growing Facebook games by MAU

Zynga Slingo managed to take the top position on our list of fastest-growing Facebook games by monthly active user, thanks to a 210 percent increase from 3 million to 5.6 million MAU.

Rovio’s Angry Birds took the No. 2 spot with 1.9 million new MAU for an 11 percent gain, ending its three-week reign as the top game on the list. Meanwhile, Draw My Thing continues to move up the list, breaking into our top ten at No. 9 with 400,000 MAU bump for a 19 percent gain. This likely has something to do with the popularity of its mobile sibling Draw Something and OMGPOP’s recent acquisition by Zynga. The future of Draw My Thing remains uncertain, since it’s been confirmed that a Draw Something is coming to Facebook.

Eight other games on the list had gain percentages above 20 percent: Hoop De Loop Saga is up by 33 percent; Solitaire Blitz increased 64 percent; Marvel: Avengers Alliance surged 27 percent; ????? ????????? (“City of the Pyramids”) jumped 46 percent; French farm sim Super Ferme sprouted 23 percent; Astro Garden moved up two spots from last week with a 31 percent gain; and Soul Crash stayed in the No. 19 spot with its 43 percent jump.

Finally, Playrix’s citybuilding sim Township debuts on our list at No. 20. The game appears to have launched in July 2011, but only saw a max of 76,000 MAU in August before declining. This new growth could be part of an “official launch” pushed from developer Playrix’s website and by publisher 6L.

All data in this post comes from our traffic tracking service, AppData. Stay tuned for our look at the fastest-growing games by daily active users on Wednesday and top emerging apps on Friday.

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Cafe World: Play Zynga Slingo to cook your dishes in a flash

Yet another cross-promotion has launched for Zynga Slingo in another of the company's games: Cafe World. This one requires you to earn - you guessed it - 30 Medals in Zynga Slingo in order to earn two prizes back in your cafe.

As a refresher, Zynga Slingo combines slot machines and bingo cards, but since each game takes so many energy to play, this particular promotion might actually take you a day or two to complete (that is, earning 30 Medals isn't exactly a fast process). However, once you've earned 30 Medals, you won't have to earn anymore Medals to take advantage of this Cafe World promotion, or any of the similar promotions launched in other games over the past few weeks.

Once you've completed your part of the bargain, you'll receive a 50% Lightning Stove and a six pack of Spices for your cafe. Sure, the Spices might be nice, but I think the ability to cook a long dish twice as fast (say, a two-day dish that now only takes a single day to cook) is a pretty great incentive, don't you? We'll make sure to let you know what other sorts of prizes you can expect across Zynga's games, so keep checking back!

What do you think of this particular Zynga Slingo promotion? Have you already earned your 30 Medals, or have you just now started to play the game? Sound off in the comments.

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