• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, May 26, 2010

Highlighting its efforts to decrease its dependence on Facebook, social game company Zynga today announced a partnership with Yahoo to offer its games throughout the Web portal's network including the home page, Yahoo Games and Yahoo Mail.

Zynga last week struck a new five-year agreement with Facebook, where it operates hugely popular games like FarmVille and Mafia Wars on the social network. But the deal came only after difficult negotiations as Zynga objected Facebook seeking a 30% cut of revenue from the game maker's sales through Facebook's new virtual currency.

Zynga had also reportedly considered launching its own social games site called Zynga Live.

Earlier this year, Zynga reached a similar deal to the Yahoo pact with Microsoft, distributing its games across the company's online properties including MSN Games and Windows Live Messenger. It also provides games on MySpace and the iPhone.