Zynga expands into Europe via its new German base, goes on hiring drive

In between trying to patent virtual currency, launching FarmVille on the iPad, buying a games studio and hiring a mobile head, Zynga also appears to be building out its presence in Europe.

We’ve discovered new job postings for Germany which indicates it’s pretty serious about the German asset it recently acquired in the form of Dextrose AG in Frankfurt. This is a well known tech firm which does what German tech firms often do very well, given their rich heritage in open source and hacker culture. Namely, push the boundaries. And to that end Dextrose has developed a commercial game engine for browser games which don’t require any plugins. Their “Aves Engine” game engine allows the development of 2D or 2.5D games with mere HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

Zynga is also advertising on ‘Germany’s LinkedIn’, Xing. We reached out and have confirmed the hiring spree with Zynga.

Aside from Dextrose, now re-named Zynga Germany, it also has an operational office in Dublin where low corporation tax typically attracts US firms on a European expansion drive. Zynga has lots of profit to play with and a war chest via Softbank Capital which recently increased by $150 million, so hiring is not going to be hard.

Given they’ve also bought XPD in Beijing, personally I’m wondering why they haven’t got Cmune in Beijing yet but I daresay that’s another story.