This isn't to be taken as a sign of ill-health for Playfish's Facebook portfolio, or an imminent downturn for gaming activity on the network. This is a rare but overdue pruning, something that virtually all of the major social network gaming operators could perform, but choose not to. Zynga, Playdom and EA itself, among many others, continue to hold a number of living-dead titles, games that have long fallen from grace with gamers and tout miniscule user counts, but which still occupy the app ecosystem. Playfish's titles which are soon to be culled currently have larger userbases than these, but their capacity to justify the required elements of ongoing support and quality necessary for operating a major social network game is already questionable. While retaining defunct titles could be seen as a harmless, minor way in which to widen the net of an operator's network reach and presence, channelling drifting/curious users toward active titles, there's also a risk that comes from bad housekeeping: users that make first-contact with an operator's portfolio via a poorly-serviced game could be damaging association for the company brand.

Further, it's worth noting that both Gangster City and Poker Rivals will have seen immense pressure of competition from Zynga's equivalent titles (Mafia Wars and Zynga Poker), which regularly occupy the top 5 games on Facebook. Pirates Ahoy, however, offered a more experimental theme, that failed to retain players, despite a moderately strong peak performance of over 6m monthly active users in August 2010. Playfish's biggest title remains one of its oldest, Pet Society, and the operator continues to explore the opportunities presented by the myriad big-name brands touted by its owner, EA, including a recent launch of Monopoly Millionaires. Playfish's Q1 2011 performance, along with several other major Facebook gaming companies, is explored in an imminent Market Monitor report due from IHS Screen Digest.