Zynga empire stretches to Washington

Social games giant Zynga has opened another studio in the US State of Washington.

It appears the company is looking to hire web engineers over development talent, implying the new hub won’t be used for game development, at least for now.

A notice on Zynga’s Jobs board says the firm is "building a world-class team of web engineers in Seattle," and "hiring at all levels from associate engineers to architects."

Washington hosts a cluster of development talent. In the city of Redmond lies Halo group 343 Industries, while Bellevue inhabits PC kingpin Valve.

Seattle itself boasts the longstanding casual games group PopCap.

Big Fish Games, Microsoft, RealNetworks, and WildTangent are among other groups based in Seattle.