I think this misses the point entirely. Zynga is not failing because their products are cheap to recreate. Plenty of companies, in tech and beyond, have easily recreatable products but do just fine. Zynga is "failing" (if you can call it that) because they depended on cheap user traffic from Facebook - both through free virality and later cheap ad buys. Facebook is maturing as a business and ad prices are going up. And Facebook realized that all that game spam was just not worth the 30% vig they charged (probably the hard way - through testing for user engagement). Take away those temporary advantages and Zynga is just like any other gaming company.
This is a right sizing of the company and its revenues to reflect the games they own, once you take away the cheap/free traffic.
This is a right sizing of the company and its revenues to reflect the games they own, once you take away the cheap/free traffic.