Zynga’s gamers are goners.
The biggest online social gaming company said yesterday that over the past 12 months, 13 million daily active users disappeared.
That’s a 21 percent drop, to 52 million, at the end of the first quarter compared to the year-earlier period.
“Our data points to nine of their top 10 games being down close to double digits from the beginning to end of the quarter,” said analyst Ken Sena with Evercore Partners.
The falloff, announced after the close of regular trading, helped spook investors — who bid down the San Francisco company’s shares 8.9 percent in extended trading, to $3.05.
Monthly active users were down, to 253 million from 292 million a year ago.
The shrinking pool of players for its games — including hits like “FarmVille 2” and “Zynga Poker” — are just a symptom of a company that is struggling to come up with new compelling franchises to keep gamers on its platform.
The declining user base is felt on Zynga’s balance sheet, with revenues down 18 percent in the quarter, to $264 million, from a year ago — in line with analyst estimates.
Its 1 cent per share profit also met expectations.
But that did little to keep investors from rushing the exits — especially after CEO Mark Pincus forecast that revenue in the current quarter would, at just $235 million, fall far short of the $265 million that analysts forecast.
“We think 2013 is going to be bumpy,” Pincus told analysts in a conference call.
Zynga‘s stock had been up nearly 42 percent this year before yesterday’s tumble as investors’ appetites were whetted by the notion that Zynga would profit by moving into real-money gambling as states’ laws changed.
It is too early in that effort to tell how big a boost it could provide, but given the high regulatory hurdles to real-money gaming in the US, expectations are overdone, Sena said.
“Real-money gambling is not enough of a catalyst to support an investment thesis,” he wrote in a client note.
For now, Zynga is looking to cut costs by shutting down games like “The Ville” and “Empires & Allies.”
Meanwhile, it is doubling down on its hit franchises even as it looks to create new ones.
Yesterday, Zynga finally released “Draw Something 2.”
The company bought the original “Draw Something” for nearly $200 million last year as part of its strategy to buy hit games when it couldn’t create them.
The company eventually proclaimed the purchase a bust by taking a write-down for the cost of the deal at the end of last year.
Zynga is trying to restore its business by navigating to more mobile-focused games. The mobile Web has proved a challenge to most companies, including Facebook, once Zynga’s closest partner.
Zynga’s earliest hits like FarmVille” were built to be played on PCs.
Now the company is focused on “re-creating these franchises and winning in the long run on mobile,” COO David Koh said.