It’s common knowledge that Zynga isn’t doing so hot anymore. The company has already laid off over 100 employees in an attempt to cut costs, but now the social games maker is shutting down entire games that aren’t performing to its expectations.

Zynga sent out an email to Mafia Wars 2 players that the game would be shutting down on December 30. AppData pegs the game as having 20,000 daily active users and 280,000 monthly active users. Compared to the original’s 280,000 DAU and 1.1 million MAU, Mafia Wars 2 is underperforming at an alarming rate. It’s not hard to imagine why Zynga wants to cut its losses here and usher players back into the original.

Mafia Wars 2 may have been a failure, but it still has a few hundred thousands players that Zynga can shop other titles to. As part of the closing, the company is offering a complimentary bonus package to any Mafia Wars 2 players in one of Zynga’s more successful games – including CastleVille, ChefVille, FarmVille 2, Mafia Wars or YoVille.

Mafia Wars 2 is the latest game to get the axe following a leaked memo from Zynga CEO Mark Pincus that said the company was shutting down 13 games over the next year. It was preceded by Treasure Isle, FishVille and Adventure World which are all set to shut down in the next two months. The company also shut down three of the games developed by its Japanese branch.

After all these closures, it’s important to remember that Zynga still has quite a few popular games still in operation. The company isn’t done just yet, and its amended contract with Facebook could prove advantageous as it allows the social games maker to pursue other partnerships in the social games space. 2013 could very well be the year Zynga finally figures out mobile and has a hit that can stay profitable for more than a few months.

[h/t: Games.com]