Internet games developer Zynga opens customer care centre in Dublin

THE US online gaming company behind the CityVille and FarmVille games officially opened its customer care centre in Dublin yesterday.

The office, established here in 2010 and currently employing some 50 people, is hiring further staff to support international players of the company’s games.

Zynga, headquartered in San Francisco, is the world’s largest social game developer, with over 250 million monthly players . Originally made popular through Facebook, its games are now available on platforms including iPhone and Android devices.

While unable to put a figure on the jobs to be created, chief operating officer Marcus Segal said “the purpose of the Dublin centre is to care for our international user base and, as that grows, this team is going to grow”.

Mr Segal said the Dublin office was interested in hiring customer care, community management, IT, business operations and human resource professionals. The office will be responsible for supporting the company’s French-, Italian-, German-, Spanish-, Portuguese-, Turkish-, Indonesian- and Korean-speaking gamers.

Welcoming Zynga to Dublin, Minister for Jobs Richard Bruton said that, with Ireland now home to half of the world’s digital gaming companies, “the Government believes that developing Ireland as a hub for digital gaming is a realistic expectation”.

Mr Bruton said he believed that gaming plays to Ireland’s natural strengths. “I think we are a people of interaction and of testing one another’s boundaries . . . I understand that you can do mischief as well as good through the Zynga network and I think that appeals to our sense of balance.

“We may be the island of saints and scholars, but we are also the island of begrudgers, so it appeals very much to our sense of fun,” the Minister said.

Mr Segal said IDA Ireland had been “invaluable” in the company’s decision to locate in Ireland. “Before I had even contemplated the internationalisation of our games, the IDA had already reached out, which was very impressive and was not something that I forgot.”

IDA chief executive Barry O’Leary said: “Zynga is a very welcome addition to the digital media industry cluster in Ireland with many of the world’s leading ‘Born on the internet’ companies having established significant operations here. With an ever-increasing number of such companies locating in Ireland, we are well-established as the internet capital of Europe.”