Zynga's co-dependent Facebook relationship detailed in new tell-all document

As FarmVille-maker Zynga prepares to sew its oats on the stock market, one of the more interesting discoveries about the social gaming company is just how much its success depends on its relationship with Facebook.

In its initial S-1 filing mentions how much Zynga's overall success hinges on its relationship with Facebook, something that could potentially scare off skittish investors. A new addendum to the S-1 filing has now been released, which offers more detail on the game maker's codependency on Facebook and, to quote All Things D, "it's complicated."

Here are a few of the more compelling highlights from this new document:

- Any Zynga game built with Facebook integration is exclusive to Facebook as long as the agreement is in effect.

- Zynga has agreed to tell Facebook about any new Facebook games roughly a week before launch, and that exclusivity snaps into place as soon as the new game is available.

- Zynga agreed that its users cannot play any games in the agreement unless they are actively logged into Facebook while they play.

- Facebook has denied Zynga the right to launch its games on other social networks (there's a specific list of competitors in the doc, but that list has been omitted from the document).

- In exchange, Facebook has agreed to assist Zynga in meeting, according to the agreement, "certain growth targets for monthly unique users of Covered Zynga Games."

- If Zynga games reach or don't reach Facebook's growth targets, then the terms of the exclusivity will change.

One of the more interesting parts of this addendum is that Zynga is allowed to build its own "Zynga Platform" on top of the Facebook platform, though it's not clear what exactly that means (there's a section of the document that seems to explain this, but it has also been omitted).

This could simply be a reference to some sort of back-end technical thing or maybe Zynga's RewardVille and powerful cross-promotional game bar that sits atop every Zynga game on Facebook. There's also the slightest possibility that this hints at Zynga's master escape plan (maybe building its own social network/game platform like it was rumored to be doing a few years ago) if its marriage with Facebook isn't happily ever after.

[Via All Things D]