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The king of social gaming is losing a lot of friends.

On Monday, Zynga laid off 520 employees -- about 18 percent of its workforce -- in an attempt to restructure its ailing business in the face of a changing gaming landscape.

"Today is a hard day for Zynga and an emotional one for every employee of our company," Zynga CEO Marc Pinkus wrote on the company’s blog. "We are saying painful goodbyes to about 18% of our Zynga brothers and sisters…The scale that served us so well in building and delivering the leading social gaming service on the Web is now making it hard to successfully lead across mobile and multiplatform, which is where social games are going to be played."

Andrew Reisse (Credit: ABC News)Andrew Scott Reisse, the 33 year-old co-founder of the company that makes the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset, was struck and killed in a Santa Ana crosswalk Thursday by a car that was attempting to avoid the police.

KABC reports that a car allegedly driven by 21-year old Victor Sanchez struck two other cars and ran through several red lights -- including the crosswalk where Reisse was walking -- in a high-speed chase. Sanchez and two other suspects in the car were taking into custody. Police say all are gang members on probation with outstanding warrants. Reisse died at the scene.

Wii U (Credit: Sarah Tew/CNET)Microsoft and Sony both have new consoles coming, so price cuts make sense on existing models. Even the Wii U might get discounted, according to Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter.

By Don Reisinger, CNET

The E3 gaming conference that kicks off later this month might turn out to be a boon for deal-seekers.

In a note to investors Monday, Wedbush analyst and long-time gaming industry evaluator Michael Pachter said that he expects Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft all to announce console price cuts at the show. He believes that Sony and Microsoft will both cut prices on their PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, respectively, by "at least $50." Pachter also believes that the Wii will drop to $99 -- down from the $129.99 the company is currently selling some bundles for.

If you thought Call of Duty had realistic graphics, you haven’t seen the life-sized statue of one of the game’s characters standing guard at the offices of Los Angeles-based game studio, Robotoki.

The LAPD sure has, however -- and it nearly resulted in a shootout.

Late Thursday night, police stormed Robotoki’s office in response to a panic alarm, leading to a tense 15-minute standoff with a perfectly harmless statue of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2’s Simon “Ghost" Riley, reports Polygon.

E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (Credit: Atari)One of gaming’s greatest mysteries might soon be uncovered.

You’ve likely heard the tale before: Millions of unsold copies of the disastrous ET: The Extraterrestrial game for the Atari 2600 lie buried in a New Mexico landfill. Despite a slew of believers and evidence supporting the story, doubters remain. But in the next few months, we'll have the answer once and for all.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (Credit: Bioware)The history of Star Wars games is filled with hits and misses. For every Battlefront, there's a Masters of Teras Kasi.

But Bioware's Knights of the Old Republic, released in 2003, has always stood head and shoulders above the rest -- and now it's coming to the mobile gaming world.

(Credit: Video screenshot by Leslie Katz/CNET)

By Michelle Starr, CNET

There are already a few ways you can make Lego robotics, including Lego Mindstorms -- the latest iteration of which includes support for smartphone control -- and, more recently, a Kickstarter campaign to get Raspberry Pi in on the action. The toy company, however, seems to be seeking new ways to make Lego robotics accessible.

The latest is a collaboration with Sony to create a range of bricks called "Toy Alive" aimed at keeping kids interested in Legos in the age of video games. Unveiled at an open house at the Sony Computer Science Laboratories in Tokyo, the bricks are embedded with various electronics that can be controlled with a PlayStation controller, including motors for mobility, actuators that can destroy Lego creations, and tiny cameras that can broadcast to tablets and smartphones.

(Credit: Getty Image News)Monopoly is one of the most beloved board games of all time, so you'd think we'd all know how to play it correctly.

Turns out we don't.

Perhaps because so many people learn the game from their parents, siblings and friends, no one has bothered to read the actual rules for a while. But according to an old blog post dug up by Buzzfeed, reading the rules actually changes the game in a big way.