Ireland now the headquarters for Farmville social networking game

Anyone with even a minimal knowledge of Facebook knows what a huge hit the game FarmVille, the computer game created by Zynga, has been on the social network.

Now Ireland’s gaming industry has secured a major victory as Zynga has decided to open its European headquarters in Dublin.

That's a boon for Irish computing since the game now pulls in over 250 million monthly users and the company itself has experienced non-stop growth since it opened in the US four years ago.

Nearly one-hundred new staff have been hired to work at Zynga's Dublin office, with plans for further expansion in the near future.

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The new operations at Zynga’s Irish office will focus on customer care, online community management, business functions and content management.

Speaking at the launch, Zynga’s chief operating officer Marcus Segal told the press that Ireland’s Industrial Development Authority (IDA) helped to broker the deal.

'They found us in San Francisco and they reached out early and often. But that’s only part of the story – there are lots of countries that have IDA functions, but nobody did as great a job as the IDA did on really partnering with us and showing us the way,' he explained.

Zynga is not the first major software company to be impressed by Irish know how. Ireland has already lured large technology companies like Facebook, Google and Symantec, all of whom now have major offices there.

Enterprise Ireland is also running funding competitions to help new technology companies get off the ground.