Zynga’s glory days met a bitter end when the company announced that it will be laying off 18 percent (250 employees) of its workforce. In addition to the layoffs, the company is shutting down its operations in New York, Los Angeles and Dallas.

The move comes as Zynga struggles to deliver more mobile games such as Running With Friends, which has an average app star rating of 4.5 from 22,700 players in less than one month after being launched. In fact, it’s the first game since Words With Friends in its ‘With Friends’ series to gain any significant buzz. The ‘franchise’ model is one they hope to continue to grow and take mobile — with hits such as FarmVille and it’s CountyFair, which has 39 million monthly players despite only being available on the web.

“These moves, while hard to face today, represent a proactive commitment to our mission of connecting the world through games.  Mobile and touch screens are revolutionizing gaming.  Our opportunity is to make mobile gaming truly social by offering people new, fun ways to meet, play and connect.  By reducing our cost structure today we will offer our teams the runway they need to take risks and develop these breakthrough new social experiences,” Zynga CEO Marc Pincus stated in a blog post.

Zynga’s shares dropped by 12 percent down to $2.99, 70 percent below the company’s IPO price of $10.

Last year, Zynga was quick to acquire OMGPOP Inc., the company behind the popular game Draw Something for $180 million, plus another $30 million for employee retention payments.  Draw Something was quite popular, hitting 50 million downloads in just 50 days after its release, but has since faded into the background as more mobile games were launched.

Big companies have a knack of acquiring startups in their prime but are quick to close them down when things start to fall apart.  Zynga’s New York office is OMGPOP’s headquarters and is one of the offices closing down.

Joining Kristin Feledy in this morning’s NewsDesk is SiliconANGLE Senior Managing Editor Kristen Nicole with her Breaking Analysis on why Zynga has struggled to conquer the mobile gaming scene.

Kristen Nicole explained that when Zynga started it relied heavily on Facebook, a large part of its success was spent on the social giant’s yard. Facebook also had some bumps in the road when it reached out to the mobile sector, failing to provide a comparable platform for today’s smartphone era.  The result is a disconnected social experience from the web to mobile, leaving Facebook and its ecosystem lacking the ability to optimize the mobile web.  Pincus has stated in the past that social is the missing link for Zynga’s mobile success, and that neither Facebook nor Apple have pushed as much social traffic as he’d hoped through their mobile game offerings.

“The same has not been true with gaming, particularly with Zynga’s games, some of them have done well, a very interesting acquisition strategy and trying to tap into the mobile marketplace it hasn’t really worked out as planned,” Kristen says.

“The rapidness of mobile adoption has really thrown a lot of businesses, whether they are enterprise facing or [for] consumer/entertainment purposes, social networking. Mobile came a lot harder, a lot faster than a lot of people expected.  So with Zynga not being able to fully leverage the Facebook social network on the mobile end, which is a lost opportunity for Facebook as well,  Zynga’s had a lot of issues moving forward,” Kristen Nicole explained.

For more of Kristen Nicole’s Breaking Analysis on Zynga’s massive layoff, check out the NewsDesk video below: