• Bloomberg, Tuesday, April 17, 2012 11:57 AM

Heads up all you social-gaming startups. In search of its next “FarmVille,” Zynga is prepared to drop hundreds of millions of dollars, according to its merger chief Barry Cottle, and CEO Mark Pincus. Not that spending big in M&A is anything new for the gaming powerhouse. Just last month, Zynga paid $180 million for OMGPop, while in 2010 and 2011 the company spent a combined $147.2 million on 22 companies. Not anywhere near satisfied, however, Pincus says he expects to do “a few” deals the size of OMGPop or larger in the next three to five years.

“In its first year as a publicly traded company, Zynga is turning to M&A to expand into new regions and markets such as mobile games,” according to Bloomberg. Explains Pincus: “We love finding great, accomplished teams that share our mission and vision. If we ever see breakout opportunities that massively accelerate social gaming at Zynga, we’ll aggressively pursue those, too.” Led by Cottle, Zynga’s restructured acquisitions team is working to speed up its deal-making process, outbid rivals on price and do a better job of keeping the talent it purchases, Bloomberg reports. “Their objective: injecting more high-growth hits like OMGPop’s ‘Draw Something’ into Zynga’s portfolio of games.”

Read the whole story at Bloomberg »