The first financial reports for Zynga's 2013 financial year are in and while income is on the rise, the number of people actually playing the games made by the Facebook publisher have continued to fall, with a 21 per cent drop off in active players since the same time in 2011.

However not all is doom and gloom. Farmville 2 is apparently doing very well, with over 40 million active users every month. MCV is reporting that Zynga is very pleased with these results and that the game had exceeded expectations. This has no doubt helped contribute to the higher than previous earnings, with a net income of $4.1 million. This makes quite a change from last year, where Zynga was haemorrhaging money, dropping almost $85 million in one quarter.

Zynga is hoping online gambling will help its finances

Part of this could be down to the closing of a lot of unprofitable studios and developers, which Zynga undertook in 2012. Unfortunately for the firm however, overall sales for this year are down 18 per cent. So while some people  seem to be spending more on their social networking games, less people are splashing out overall.

Moving forward, Zynga is looking to online gambling to solve much of its money problems, hoping that games like ZyngaPlusPoker and ZyngaPlusCasino will generate the necessary funds to keep it moving onwards and upwards – and perhaps do something about that stock price.

KitGuru Says: I must admit I'm not a huge Zynga fan. Or social network gaming fan. If you like games, I urge you and others to check out proper games on Steam – or through app stores. Like Candy Crush Saga? Get yourself Bejewelled, it's the classic that still plays well and won't charge you “lives” to progress.

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