Launched in 2007, Challenge Games was backed by Sequoia Capital and Globespan Capital Partners for developing online games with a virtual goods component. Its games included Warstorm, Ponzi and many other games.
On June 3, 2010, Zynga acquired Challenge games, and renamed the company as Zynga Austin. However, Warstorm now belongs to Zynga but not Zynga Austin, as the department provides service mainly to Asian countries.[1] In the acquiring process most games created by Challenge Games were forced to be discontinued and closed, however Warstorm was the only game to be brought onto Facebook and was lucky enough to live since. However, the original website Warstorm.com was shortly closed afterwards.
The merging process and discontinuation of Warstorm was speculated to be negatively rated and Zynga, as the acquiring company, was also negatively commented. [2] The major critizations included not acting to merge or move most of the account data, including challenge coin, copper, reward point conversion, cards, achievements, level and ladder system ratings; giving very inactive response on improving the game on Facebook; and designing a very Warstorm Cash based playing system.
Not enabling to transfer most data from warstorm.com means all money spent on Warstorm.com was lost on closing of the site, and as Warstorm Cash can no longer be earned by TrialPay, all Warstorm Cash must be bought with real life cash. Also, Facebook Warstorm was updated much less often compared to when Warstorm.com was open and Challenge game was still an independant company.
On August 18th, 2010, warstorm.com was closed, making the warstorm in Facebook being currently the only version of Warstorm in service.