Laurent Desegur's Exit Does Not Confirm Zynga's Demise

There are plenty of reasons to doubt Zynga's future. This isn't one of them. As we speak, Zynga ZNGA is down more than 7%. While it's hard to say if the departure of Laurent Desegur -- Zynga's former Chief Technology Officer -- has anything to do with the stock's decline, the media is (as usual) in an uproar over the company's loss. "As Zynga's stock lockup ends, Game Closure steals a mobile game expert," VentureBeat wrote in its headline, while TechCrunch led with, "Game Closure Poaches Zynga's CTO Of Mobile To Lead HTML5 Game Development." Those who dig a little deeper than the attention-grabbing headlines will see that Desegur's decision to leave Zynga does not have anything to do with the fact that the company produces nothing but clone game crap. “I vote with my feet," Desegur told VentureBeat. "After first-hand experience with the Game Closure software development kit (SDK) and the people behind it, I knew that I had to be involved in the growth and refinement of the team and technology. Game Closure is building technology that radically enhances the quality, development speed, and availability of games on mobile. I believe these tools are essential to build beautiful, frictionless social games which can compete in today's market.” According to Inside Social Games, Desegur has moved around quite a bit over the last five years, jumping from Playfish Games to Zynga after just a couple of years with the studio. If history is to repeat itself, expect Desegur to make another move no later than 2014. Follow me @LouisBedigianBZ