Zynga Leases Data Center in Virginia

Fast-growing social gaming company Zynga has reportedly taken space in a major data center in northern Virginia, according to industry sources. Zynga's games, which include Farmville and Mafia Wars, are played by more than 235 million active users each month, primarily on the Facebook platform.

Sources indicate Zynga has recently leased space at ACC5, a 360,000 square foot data center in Ashburn, Virginia. The building's developer, DuPont Fabros Technology (DFT), announced several new leases last week but did not identify the new tenants.

Zynga's Lisa Chan said the company had no comment on the reports of the Ashburn data center space.

Zynga has been a high-profile user of cloud computing services, using tools from RightScale and NorthScale to run its gaming infrastructure on Amazon EC2. It's not immediately clear how Zynga's data center space will fit into its infrastructure or its growth plans.

The reports of the data center lease come amid rampant speculation of tensions between Zynga and Facebook, which could prompt Zynga to launch a stand-alone social gaming network. Even if Zynga and Facebook grow apart, their infrastructure would remain close. Facebook is a major tenant at ACC5, and will have thousands of servers in the same location as Zynga's reported new data center space.