It Girl's creator left Facebook behind ... and its Facebook developers

Refocusing on a new mission can be refreshing for a company. And while that's likely the case for CrowdStar, that feeling comes with a price. VentureBeat reports that the It Girl creator has laid off a couple dozen of its Facebook-specific developers in its mission to focus solely on mobile social games, namely its "Girl" series of games. Such is the price for glory?

What strikes us is the possibility that CrowdStar didn't offer for said developers to move over to its mobile division. It's especially striking when you consider the fact that the Happy Aquarium creator raised another $11.5 million in funding from investors. It's always unfortunate to see folks laid off, but it's not hard to see why CrowdStar opted to drop Facebook entirely.

For one, there's no Zynga in the mobile world. Sure, Zynga has a presence in mobile gaming, but no company in mobile games has amassed Zynga-like power. VentureBeat points out that CrowdStar was once the number two developer on Facebook. For it to abandon the platform completely after losing out says a lot about the state of the social gaming world.

And frankly, jarring moves like these also say a lot about companies like CrowdStar. Who's to say that a proverbial Zynga won't rise on mobile devices? That Zynga could very well be, well, Zynga. But it could also be CrowdStar, and maybe that's reason enough.

Are you surprised by CrowdStar's major move to mobile? Could it be the proverbial Zynga of the iPad? Sound off in the comments. Add Comment.