Mega game company Zynga is launching a new game according to TechCrunch.com called Adventure World. (be sure to read the interesting fact near the bottom of this DotWeekly article)
The new Zynga game will be a "Facebook" game but Zynga often tries to own the matching .com domain name to its games, but AdventureWorld.com is going to be a hard one to buy! Why? Because the domain name sold in 2010 for $35,000!
So if Zynga wants to get its hands on AdventureWorld.com, they are going to have to pony up and pay at least in the mid five figure range! AdventureWorld.com.au is the owner of AdventureWorld.com
I would think if Zynga even contacted AdventureWorld.com they will likely get the "It’s not for sale" line. Hard to tell if they would even be aware that the domain sold last year for $35K at Afternic.com or not but it did.
Interesting fact
Little did Zynga likely know it, but around the very same time they purchased the domain name Cityville.com for $38,225 via Moniker in 2010 is when AdventureWorld.com sold for $35K! In fact, DnJournal.com reported the domain name sales right next to each other in a weekly domain name sales report for the week of June 14-20th 2010!
Pretty crazy!!!
Abdu
I think acquiring the matching domain will not be something that Zynga will always be considering moving forward. Everyone’s on Facebook these days, and that’s where their audience reach them.
Jamie Zoch
@Abdu,
There is that one famous line “Never put all your eggs in one basket” and without the domain Zynga is putting a lot of eggs in one basket IMO.
Right now, it doesn’t look as to they are even sure what way to go. They have spent some pretty high prices on domains already, registered a fair share of domains they plan on putting on Google Plus etc.
Kirkpad
Exactly. They obviously are willing to pay for CityVille domains so they should be willing to pay for AdventureWorld domains if they want the popularity to really grow.
They could opt to register something like AdventureWorldGame, or TheAdventureWorldGame, although those are likely taken too.
Jamie Zoch
@Kirkpad,
It’s pretty rare that they would go with “added word” domains others than the exact match name of the game. AdventureWorldGame.com was registered yesterday at GoDaddy, so it’s hard to say who registered it due to the whois privacy in whois but it could have been Zynga. They have used GoDaddy in the past and that will be a search term that gets some volume.
Kirkpad
I was just thinking along the lines of thepotfarmgame.com which is actually a pretty popular Farmville clone, and is also on Facebook.
The game is just called Pot Farm, but the URL has added words. Although… they might be doing it for legal reasons. ;D
Jamie Zoch
@Kirkpad,
Or just don’t have the $$$$ to buy the exact match domain