@PanamaDevil do you mean that the entire zoo is going to disappear? That’s disgraceful as it’s the only part of the game that retains its original character.

@PolarTown @Neighbor Jane @MaggieAkaEiggam have any of you heard of this one?

@Sharai12 Hello and yes the entire zoo is being removed. It's already happened for some regions with the new update. I have already stored all of my zoo decorations. I bought a bunch I hadn't yet and put them in storage as well. It's all over reddit and facebook. It is incredibly sad and frustrating. We've all put so much into our zoos and to slap us with this is just selfish.

@Sharai12 and @PanamaDevil and @PolarTown I am glad Playrix is discontinuing the zoo. Township has gotten too big and is too complicated. I would not want to be starting township from level 1 today. I vote to remove the plane also.

There are no longer zoo or plane tasks for regatta. It makes it easier to get 15 or 16 tasks in. I am trying to see what we need for Animal Hotel. Will post when I get it.

As someone who has worked in game development, I've seen this pattern before.

Has anyone noticed that they no longer give the 5 t-buck 'mini-game' tasks anymore?! They also have made expedition rewards to be only profile pictures and town signs instead of animated properties. Now they are removing the zoo.

What happens in games that are declining is that revenues drop, and they can no longer pay for the staff who were making and/or maintaining these things. When those staff leave, the remaining staff trim down the game so they can manage it with reduced staff.

However, the trimmed down game ends up being less desirable, and so fewer people play. That in turn reduces revenue, which in turn requires more 'trimming'. In the end the game will reach a point where only the core player base remains and the game becomes only a shell of what it was. (Which seems to be fast approaching.)

But why remove the zoo? My speculation is so they can attract new players to the 'simplified' game.

However, if they were wise, what they *should* have done was simply move the zoo availability up to level 120. (existing players wouldn't lose anything, but if they were below level 120 they wouldn't be able to change their zoos.) If they moved the zoo up to level 120, then players who max out the town part of the game would then be able to continue the game with fresh content. Put simply, it would give people something new to strive for.

Unfortunately, the developers are missing out on opportunities, and they are likely overwhelmed in a game that is huge and hard to code. They try to do things to raise more cash, but they miss out on things that could help them. For example, they could be selling old regatta awards for t-cash, which would likely bring in more revenue.

Anyway, like most games, they usually don't age well after a decade, so this isn't really that big of a surprise to me...

@Jamie2doyen you make very good points. There are separate zoo games for animal lovers. I am all for removing aspects of the game as it has gotten too complicated. Downsizing is fine. What many players object to is the focus on match 3, but Playrix has several games; the Match 3 explorations games are often exactly the same as other of Playrix games so a group of programmers can be supporting multiple games.

@Sharai12 @Neighbor Jane @MaggieAkaEiggam Yes. According to multiple sources, including screenshots from Playrix Support, Zoo is being discontinued. Admin @Adarsh2019 has updated the wiki page as such. (Thanks!)

TBH I'm less and less interested in playing this game. It was fun, but now it's just a Candy Crush clone. Many of the decorations and distinct features are gone. I'm forced to do regattas against co-ops with a full house. The past few expeditions required stupid amount of energy points.

Looks like Playrix is trying really hard to cure my Township addition.

I'm slowing winding down my stuff here. I still have ~20k T-cash. I'll use them up and evaluate my next steps.

@Neighbor Jane "What many players object to is the focus on match 3"

Oddly enough, they likely could have simplified the game by instead removing match-3, and tying 'energy' to task completion and town-building. (same for regatta) Many games make 'matching' an integral part of the game, and the reality is that it's not something township really needs to make the game work.

In fact, one could suggest match-3 is a 'foreign' element. Completing tasks in-game with respect to farming, mining, building and such is intuitive. But match-3 isn't. It's really the only thing that doesn't fit into the game at all. (Reminds me of the song, "One of these things is not like the others, one of these things is not the same...") lol

What will be interesting is how the players react to this. Methinks the developers only rolled this out in 'select' regions so they could see if there was a negative impact on income. If so, they could potentially undo it (or pause it) before more damage was done. That may be why this wasn't mentioned in the last news update.

Anyway, the nice thing is that there are so many games out there, that a person certainly won't have a problem finding something new.

@Jamie2doyen Match-3 exists simply because that's the only steady source of income for Playrix. There are salaries to pay, servers/hosting to rent/subscribe, etc. Removing Match-3 means no more (significant) income, and Township will collapse within a week.

As long as people are playing expedition and picking match-3 regatta tasks, Playrix is safe.

Personally I doubt if zoo will be "undone". Imagine the chaos that will ensue. The messages from Playrix support explicit stated that the goal is to focus on "creating new content for your town, expedition and match-3."

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