Don Mattrick stepped down as CEO of Zynga on Wednesday and will be replaced by the company’s founder and chairman, Marc Pincus.
Mattrick took the CEO reigns from Pincus at Zynga in July 2013 after leaving his position as the head of Microsoft’s Xbox division to help lead the struggling social game maker.
In a statement, Mattrick said he will move back to Canada to “pursue my next challenge.”
“I believe the timing is now right for me to leave as CEO and let Mark lead the company into its next chapter given his passion for the founding vision and his ability to couple our mobile progress with Zynga’s unique strengths,” Mattrick said.
In a press release announcing the news on Wednesday, Pincus thanked Mattrick for helping grow Zynga’s mobile bookings by more than 30 percent during his time as CEO.
“Don joined us in a very important time in our evolution,” Pincus said. “I sincerely thank him for his leadership in better serving our players in a mobile first world and for delivering world class quality and value to our consumers.”
When Mattrick was hired back in July, Pincus called him a “#internettreasure.” (hat tip to Nick Wingfield for digging this up)
Very excited to welcome don mattrick as our new ceo #internettreasure
— mark pincus (@markpinc) July 1, 2013
Pincus founded Zynga in 2007 and helped grow one of the first gaming companies to use the free-to-play model. However, the company — which went public in 2011 — has struggled in recent years. Zynga’s financials did not improve under Mattrick, who said the company was a “great business that has yet to reach its full potential” when he became CEO in 2013.
Even though Pincus stepped down as CEO two years ago, he still had a major influence at Zynga. The New York Times notes that Pincus had 63 percent of the voting power of the company’s outstanding capital stock at the end of 2014.
Shortly after Zynga announced the news on Wednesday, shares were down more than 10 percent in after-hours trading. Zynga’s stock is down 30 percent in the last year, but was up 12 percent in the last three months before Wednesday’s news.
