Working at EA was once the dream of any amateur game developer, but now it must be Zynga. So let's chase our dreams, and apply for a job with Zynga! Going into the Zynga homepage, following the "Jobs" link at the bottom, and selecting "US Careers", we find that just in the States, there are many locations where it is possible to work for Zynga. Wow! The excitement is growing (yeah, right). So we pick Austin, TX, United States and view the Software Engineer (Austin) position. Here's what we get:
Well, the vacancy is a mess, but Zynga is a big company, and we can just look for another position somewhere else, right?
When finding something else in San Francisco, it seems like that, too, is screwed. Since we're good citizens, let's tell Zynga about the problem.
Given that there's no immediately visible easy way to drop them an email, we go to the Support page and read about Contacting Zynga Support, which is the page in the screenshot above. There is still no way of sending an email, but one can supposedly reach them through their Facebook Support page, which is the page in the screenshot below.
As a first time user you might expect to find some good customer service here, but all you see is complaints from disgruntled Zynga customers. The Zynga Facebook page (below) is no different, with countless complaints that nobody seems to answer. Makes me glad I'm not a Zynga customer, and positive that I'll never be one.
As a last resort, in the Contacting Zynga Support page there's a "Need More Help?" link on the right that takes you to per-game support. Of course here you're going to expect to see people complaining about issues, but is anyone answering them?
It pains me to see fully grown men complaining that "i lost my first goat", but seriously, is this how Zynga treats its customers? To be fair, it's notoriously difficult to contact other big game companies as well.
What really annoys me is that any contact is always regarding games. Is it really so hard to imagine a situation where a customer wants to send a game company an email about something general, such as a problem with the website, or permission to use in-game material, etc? It's quite clear that such companies care only about the cash, and unfortunately, many people in the world are stupid enough to give it to them, even for something as ridiculous as FarmVille.
