ZipZapPlay's Baking Life burns out, PopCap to close up shop Jan. 31

Between the Internet being a Debby Downer about SOPA and now Baking Life closing, this would have been the perfect day to roll right back into bed. It's downright depressing out there, folks, and EA-owned PopCap's sad decision to shut down ZipZapPlay's one leading Facebook game doesn't make it any better. Due to poor performance, the game will be no more come Jan. 31.

"Unfortunately, we had to make a very difficult decision to shut down the game," PopCap VP of communications Garth Chouteau told Inside Social Games (ISG). "The Baking Life player numbers have dropped in such a way that Baking Life is no longer performing well enough to justify continued support. As such, we are reallocating resources to games that we are developing for future release."

In its glory days back in August 2010, Baking Life enjoyed 6.7 million monthly players, according to ISG, numbers that some games today even aspire to. But even when the game welcomed a healthy 2.2 million monthly players as PopCap acquired developer ZipZapPlay in April 2011, Baking Life's future was still being decided. According to AppData, the game is home to 760,000 monthly players and just 100,000 daily.

PopCap's remaining Facebook games are based on its existing properties, and Pig Up! seems to be in development limbo at the moment. With Baking Life down and out, it's unclear what the company's next move will be when it comes to social games. Is the developer full speed ahead on that rumored casino games suite? Who knows, but what we do know is that Baking Life fans better spend that Zip Cash while it's hot.

Are you bummed to see Baking Life go? What do you think PopCap will do on Facebook next, now that ZipZapPlay's flagship game is out of the picture? Sound off in the comments. Add Comment.