Social game giant laying off 18 percent of its workforce in an effort to reduce costs; offices in four cities closed; company to offer "generous" severance packages.

Social game giant Zynga is cutting 520 jobs--or 18 percent of its workforce--in an effort to reduce costs and re-focus around mobile, the FarmVille studio announced today.

The layoffs will affect every arm of the San Francisco, California-based company and will total $80 million in staff costs.

The workforce reduction will take place across all functions of Zynga's business and is expected to be mostly completed by August.

The move will result in the closure of Zynga's offices in New York, Los Angeles, Austin, and Dallas and also includes the "slashing of other major infrastructure costs," according to The Wall Street Journal's AllThingsD.

In a memo sent to staffers today, Zynga CEO Mark Pincus--who recently slashed his annual salary to $1--called the layoffs "painful," but also necessary if the company is to succeed going forward.

"None of us ever expected to face a day like today, especially when so much of our culture has been about growth. But I think we all know this is necessary to move forward," Pincus said.

"The scale that served us so well in building and delivering the leading social gaming service on the Web is now making it hard to successfully lead across mobile and multiplatform, which is where social games are going to be played," he added.

Pincus said the staff reduction and company reorganization represents a "proactive commitment" to the company's mission of "connecting the world through games."

"By reducing our cost structure today we will offer our teams the runway they need to take risks and develop these breakthrough new social experiences," he said.

Because Zynga is making these moves today, Pincus said, the company is able to offer "generous" severance packages that demonstrate the firm's appreciation for their time and effort.

"I want to thank every one of you for the spirit, creativity and energy that you've invested in Zynga," Pincus said. "You've reintroduced a generation of people to gaming and through these games offered them new ways to connect with their families, make new friends and even sometimes find love."

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Six-month dig in New Mexico landfill aims to find out if Atari buried millions of copies of unsuccessful movie tie-in back in the eighties.

A documentary team has been given approval to excavate the site where million of copies of Atari's commercial flop E.T. are rumoured to be buried.

E.T. was released in December 1982 for the Atari 2600, with millions of copies produced under the assumption that the link to the hit Steven Spielberg movie would guarantee sales success. The failure of the game is believed to be one of the main contributing factors to 1983's crash of the video game industry.

Local news site KRQE (via ArsTechnica) reports that Canadian film production firm Fuel Industries has been granted six months of access to the site in Alamogordo, New Mexico where the millions of copies of E.T are rumoured to have been crushed and covered in concrete. The results of the dig are to be part of a documentary attempting to answer one of gaming's most enduring myths.

The excavation coincides with the 30th anniversary of the alleged dump.

Mayor of Alamorgordo Susie Galea said "I hope more people find out about Alamogordo through this opportunity that we have to unearth the Atari games in the landfill."

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CCP confirms that at no time was customer data compromised or accessible as a result of this weekend's DDoS attack.

CCP has released a statement addressing this weekend's DDoS attack on the Eve Online and Dust 514 servers, ensuring gamers that their personal data was not compromised.

"We would like to stress that at no time was customer data compromised or accessible in any way," CCP chief operating officer Jón Hörðdal Jónasson said.

Jónasson also recounted the events, saying CCP detected the DDoS attack on June 2 and, after consulting with security experts, decided to take all servers offline.

"What we can now confirm is that a person was able to utilize a vulnerability in one of the back-end services that support the operation of the Tranquility server," Jónasson said. "This vulnerability has now been secured and thoroughly tested."

Jónasson explained that CCP is looking into ways to compensate EVE and Dust players for the outage and will announce specific plans "very soon."

"We would also like to take this opportunity to thank all of our players on EVE Online and Dust 514 for their patience and understanding during this unexpected downtime and the investigation. We are grateful for your support, as always," Jónasson said.

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