Game publisher Zynga has announced the departure of several senior executives, including chief operating officer David Ko, as part of a management shake-up under new chief executive Don Mattrick.
The house cleaning comes a little more than a month after Mattrick, a former Microsoft executive, was named Zynga chief executive on July 3 and tasked with turning around the struggling game maker.
In a blog post published Tuesday, Mattrick, who replaced Zynga founder Mark Pincus, outlined a sprawling new management chart that named 13 executives from across the company as direct reports. None will report to Pincus, who now holds the title of chief product officer and owns a majority of voting shares.
Ten of the 13 executives reporting directly to Mattrick will be responsible for game development, the company said, signaling that Mattrick could be closely involved in the development of specific games.
“We are taking layers out of the executive rank to get senior leaders closer to important product initiatives,” Mattrick wrote in his blog.
“Over the past month, I have had a chance to interact with a cross section of our employees and have been able to get a general sense of the calibre of people working here, the passion for winning and desire to get Zynga back to a strong leadership,” Mattrick wrote. “Zynga is an amazing company and has tremendous potential for future growth.”
