Its stock falling precipitously, Zynga on Tuesday announced plans to partner with Chinese social networking site Sina to release Chinese-language versions of Zynga's Draw Something mobile game in mainland China.
Zynga is also launching Draw Something in 11 other languages, the company said in a statement.
"With native pop culture references and our partnership with global superstars such as Enrique Iglesias and Jennifer Lopez, the game will be even more fun for more players," said David Ko, Zynga's chief mobile officer.
The partnership with Sina, which will serve as a social networking platform for localized versions of Draw Something in Simplified and Traditional Chinese, marks a big step in Zynga's efforts to decrease its reliance on Facebook. The social game developer's fortunes rose with Facebook, the platform where Zynga hits like Farmville took off and which serves as the main source of the company's revenue.
But Zynga's reliance on Facebook has proven to be a blessing and a curse. The San Francisco-based game developer went public before Facebook, but its larger partner's disappointing IPO has served to cool investors on Zynga, which this week saw its share price dip below $5 for the first time.
In addition to the Chinese-language versions of Draw Something, the game is also available now in French, Italian, German, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Norwegian, Swedish, Dutch, Danish, Korean, and Japanese, Zynga said.
Those versions will feature translated user interfaces, use local cultural references, and include local celebrities like Spanish actor Mario Casas and Korean pop star Junsu, the company said.
The success of the company's international expansion plans and moves into mobile will be key to Zynga's ability to convince investors that it's not only still growing but that it can do so without Facebook. Draw Something, a Pictionary-like game for iOS and Android devices, appears to be key to that effort in Zynga's eyes.
Before it was acquired by Zynga earlier this year, Draw Something had become one of the celebrated overnight success stories in the mobile game industry. In March, the game topped Zynga's Words with Friends on the mobile game charts. Just days later, Zynga agreed to buy OMGPOP, the game's developer, for $180 million.
At first, that looked like a brilliant move.
In early April, Draw Something had topped 50 million downloads within just 50 days of the game's launch. In the middle of that month, Zynga added comments and social updates to the game platform then later made the game available on Amazon's Kindle Fire tablet.
But in May, it was reported that Draw Something had lost millions of users.
Zynga hopes to turn that around by releasing Draw Something in China as the first mobile game the company will launch in that country while attempting to attract a larger user base in other countries as well.
For more from Damon, follow him on Twitter @dpoeter.
