Diner Dash dev PlayFirst hit with layoffs after social games fail

by Alexander Sliwinski on Dec 7th 2011 2:25PM

PlayFirst, developer of mobile and social games like Diner Dash and Chocolatier, is going through a period of "restructuring." According to Gamasutra, this includes an unspecified number of layoffs at the studio, which had over 100 employees.

The company's stated focus on the saturated social games market has not been successful. PlayFirst shut down all its Facebook efforts, including the social adaptation of its previously successful Diner Dash franchise. Gamasutra also reports that other social games veterans who joined PlayFirst have since left for Playdom or Zynga.

The bad times haven't deterred PlayFirst. A representative for the company stated, "Our future plans are to continue to focus on the mobile casual gaming space."

Source: Gamasutra

Tags: chocolatier, diner-dash, facebook, layoffs, playfirst, social

Reader Comments (9)

There can be only one!

That sucks. My friends play a lot of social games so it sucks to not have one that people like.

mostly I see people playing games by the likes zynga and EA though.

I hate how I can't delete the DD demo from my phone.

"Quit" should be replaced with "Laid Off"

I've wondered how much diversity the social games market can actually handle. It seems unlikely that even with the size of the audience, that it can support near the number of studios that more traditional games support.