Former Zynga Casino GM leaves company
Lo Toney oversaw the addition of bingo and casino products to social operator's core poker offering.
Zynga Casino general manager Lo Toney has left the social gaming operator after more than two-and-a-half years.
Toney (pictured) previously headed up the company’s Facebook poker offering, which currently ranks second worldwide for monthly active users according to Appdata and fifth for daily active users with 39.3m and 6.2m respectively. These figures make it the most popular casino game on the social network.
According to AllThingsD, Toney had moved away from poker and taken on a mobile role in the months before his departure. His tenure as GM of Zynga Casino began in October last year, during which time he continued to hold responsibility for poker as well as overseeing the launch of Zynga Bingo, which currently has 5.6m MAUs.
“My departure is less about Zynga and more about the vast number of opportunities that currently exist in the Valley… It is the right time for me in my career to move on,” he told the publication.
In an interview with eGaming Review last year, he explained that at the time the operator had no plans to enter the real money gaming sphere, however this position changed in the months after the company’s December 2011 IPO.
CEO Mark Pincus said in July that a real-money gambling launch was planned for the first half of next year, and in August Zynga appointed former 888 senior vice president of corporate and regulated markets Maytal Ginsburg Olsha to lead the project.
Toney follows a number of senior figures in leaving Zynga over the past fewq months, chief among them former COO John Schappert and chief creative officer Mike Verdu.
The operator last week lowered its full-year outlook after what it described as a “challenging” third quarter, with losses of up to US$115m anticipated.