Odds Favor a Zynga IPO, But Hard to Say When

Rumors have been circulating for months that social game maker Zynga Game Network Inc. would file for an IPO. So far nothing. No S-1. And no hard evidence of one on the way.

But here is sort of a hint of an IPO to come, though it is admittedly a little indefinite.

Zynga board member Bing Gordon says that the odds favor a Zynga IPO, though it is difficult to say when.

“I’m pretty sure there’s more than a 50/50 chance it will eventually,” said Gordon, who is a partner at Zynga investor Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, during a brief interview at the DiscoveryBeat 2010 game and applications conference in San Francisco on Monday.

He added that it is not his decision, so the timing is hard to project.

Nevertheless, in Gordon’s view, the company does seem to be leaning toward selling stock to the public.

A Zynga IPO would likely be well received. Zynga is the fast growing developer of social networking games, such as FarmVille and Mafia Wars. Its revenue is estimated be in the hundreds of millions of dollars annually. In August, it hired Allen & Company investment banker David Wehner as its new CFO, a move interpreted as a precursor to an offering.

Zynga has over the years raised more than $244 million from investors, including Kleiner Perkins, Avalon Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, Foundry Group, Softbank Corp., Union Square Ventures and Institutional Venture Partners, according to data from Thomson Reuters, publisher of this blog.

In response to the IPO rumors, CEO Mark Pincus told CNBC in April that he presently had no plans to go public.

But then, Gordon doesn’t seem to be in a rush. When Kleiner Perkins makes an investment in a company, it usually expects to be involved for seven to 10 years, he says.