Key Cocos2d Contributors Join Farmville Developer Zynga

Social games developer Zynga has announced that Ricardo Quesada and Rolando Abarca, key contributors to the popular Cocos2d iPhone framework project, are joining the company. Quesada and Abarca come to Zynga as part of an acquisition of certain assets of Sapus Media, a company dedicated to developing professional iOS game tools. The duo were originally focused on advancing the Cocos2d open source project, while also further developing tools for mobile game developers. Cocos2d is now used by the likes of Atari, ngmoco and Gamevil in the development of games for iPhone, iPad and Mac. Zynga noted in a blog post on its official site, "Zynga has long been an advocate of the open source community and we are excited to have Ricardo and Rolando continue to support and contribute to cocos2d for iPhone while in their new roles at Zynga." "Games and applications will continue to operate on cocos2d for iPhone as they always have. Zynga did not acquire the community site, cocos2d-iphone.org, which will continue to be managed separately by Ricardo along with the other cocos2d for iPhone administrators." It concluded, "We look forward to advancing the cocos2d for iPhone open source project alongside the cocos2d for iPhone developer community." Last month, former senior vice president of Cisco's Collaboration Software Group Debra Chrapaty joined Zynga as its new chief information officer. The company also revealed earlier in the year that it had absorbed Floodgate Entertainment, developer of mobile title Civ IV: War of Two Cities.