Zynga recently launched Castleville, but now the social gaming giant appears to have plans to launch a new game called Forestville.
This week Zynga registered several domains with the word Forestville in the name like ForestvillewithFriends.com and ForestvilleZynga.com.
All of the names were registered through the internet brand protection company MarkMonitor that Zynga regularly uses to acquire domain names.
And as I usually point out, though each domain registration is hidden behind MarkMonitor’s WHOIS privacy service ‘DNStinations’, MarkMonitor is in the business of helping Fortune 100 companies protect their brands online. Zynga’s own Zynga.com is registered with MarkMonitor, as are hundreds of its other domains.
So, there’s no doubt whatsoever that Zynga is behind these names.
Interestingly enough, Zynga doesn’t own the prime internet real estate: Forestville.com. The domain is currently home to the Forestville Central School District website out of New York. But that hasn’t stopped Zynga from registering typos of Forestville.com like wwwforestville.com (minus a ‘.’) or forestvile.com (minus an ‘l’).
Zynga did manage to get several country domains like Forestville.de, Forestville.jp and Forestville.co.uk. A message on the home page of Forestville.de reads, “This domain is registered and protected by MarkMonitor”.
Below is a list of many of the names registered earlier this week.
forestvile.com
forestville.de
forestville.jp
forestville.co.uk
forestville2.com
forestvilleandroid.com
forestvilleapp.com
forestvillefacebook.com
forestvillegame.com
forestvillegamecards.com
forestvilleipad.com
forestvilleiphone.com
forestvillelive.com
forestvillemobile.com
forestvilleplus.com
forestvillewithfriends.com
forestvillezynga.com
playforestville.com
wwwforestville.com
At the time of this story going online today at 5am EST, Zynga has not made any announcement about the game. So Forestville becoming a full-fledged game is just speculation until more news emerges from Zynga.
I’ve reached out to the Forestville.com webmaster to see whether they had been contacted about the domain and will update this story if I hear back.
Here’s a look at the WHOIS record for ForestvilleZynga.com.
[Update 3 on Dec. 14, 2011: Zynga finally announced the game on it’s blog.]
[Update 2 on Dec. 9, 2011: Zynga filed a trademark application (Serial Number: 85487695) for “Forestville” with the United States Patent and Trademark Office.]
[Update 1 on Dec. 5, 2011 at 4:10pm EST: It’s official. There is a Facebook page for Forestville. The game is headed to iOS, but hasn’t launched as of yet.]
Discussion: Joystiq, AllFacebook, VG247, Games.com, Shacknews, GameStar and Gamer Zona
