Slainte! FarmVille-maker Zynga opens Dublin office [Updated]

Raise your stouts, because Zynga has officially landed on the Emerald Isle. The monolithic social games studio has opened its Dublin, Ireland office, and Irish Times reports that it will soon become the company's largest European office. Zynga announced that it was expanding into the land of green rolling hills and dark frothy brews in October of last year. Zynga Dublin joins the recently established Zynga Mobile UK--formerly known as Wonderland--and Zynga Germany.

Irish Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation Richard Bruton said that Ireland could become a world leader in online gaming, but it's going to take smart policies, according to the Irish Times. While Bruton shows caution in Ireland's increasingly digital future, IDA chief executive Barry O'Leary is openly optimistic.

"Zynga is a very welcome addition to the digital media industry cluster in Ireland with many of the world's leading 'born on the internet' companies having established significant operations here," O'Leary told the Irish Times. "With an ever increasing number of such companies locating in Ireland, we are well established as the internet capital of Europe."

What exactly Zynga Dublin will be up to, such as making new games, is unknown at this point. But judging from the job openings in Dublin on Zynga's job board, it looks like it will be a customer and networking support office. We've contacted Zynga for comment.

Update: IDA Ireland released a statement regarding the new office, and shed some light on exactly what's to go down there. "The office encompasses customer support, community management, and support functions such as IT, human resources, business intelligence, and CS content management in languages including French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Indonesian and Korean," IDA Ireland said. It looks as if the name of Zynga Dublin's game is localization, which makes sense considering the company is reportedly approaching IPO. Zynga COO of Game Studios added, "We are excited to officially launch our office in Dublin to service our international players with customer care and community management in multiple languages."

[Image Credit: Develop]

Do you think Zynga was smart to open an office in Dublin? How do you think this will affect Zynga's presence in Europe? Sound off in the comments. Add Comment.