Facebook Diner Dash Shutting Down Following Performance Decline

The Facebook version of PlayFirst's popular Diner Dash series will be taken offline after only eight months, following a steep decline in the game's popularity. The game -- based on a popular casual game franchise that launched in 2003 -- went online in January and peaked at just over 2.5 million monthly active users, according to stats from AppData. Monthy active users today are just under half that, at 1,248,401. Its daily usage has fared even worse: the game saw as many as 140,000 daily users early this month, but has dropped below 100,000 in the past few days. As noted by social gaming blog Inside Social Games, the news comes just three months after the announcement that the company would shut down another of its popular franchise's Facebook iterations, Chocolatier. The game currently has just over 1,800 daily active users. The company secured $9.2 million to fund a push into the mobile and social spaces in October, promoting chief marketing officer Eric Hartness to lead the effort. Other than the two titles that are on their way out, PlayFirst does not currently operate any additional Facebook games.