[pandaman]

Zynga has poached a lot of talent from the real game industry. People don't need to resign and join Zynga - it's a choice they've made. And with the requirements Zynga had - even if you had been unemployed and got an offer from Zynga you could get another one everywhere else: they had not been exactly scrapping the bottom of the barrel, quite the opposite.

[heliotron]

I'm curious as to how were they able to poach. Money, equity, working conditions, all of these, none of these...?

Working conditions in some of the big companies in the real games industry sound pretty bad to me, but I am only going on lazy reading of articles like "EA spouse", I have no experience in the industry itself. I think I'd be pretty outraged to be on a Farmville death march, for sure.

[pandaman]

I'd guess equity and money. Zynga does not seem to have conditions different from EA (not surprisingly as it's managed by the same people) and EA is not really able to poach somebody with its working conditions.