Zynga's shares fell below $3 on Thursday following the reporting of quarterly results that came in well below analysts' expectations; 10% below to be exact. The $302 million in revenue was also off 8% from the previous quarter.

That revenue is derived entirely from the sale of virtual goods in their many free-to-play Facebook games, including FarmVille, which has had a particularly steep decline in users, tumbling from 80 million in March to just 20 million in July according to appdata.com.

Zynga at least partially blamed its drought on the farm on revisions Facebook has made to the way users can search for and find games, which has made it harder for older games, even certain immensely popular farming sims, to appear prominently in search results.

A delay in releasing new games like The Ville, and the underwhelming performance of Draw Something, which Zynga spent $200-$250 million to acquire back in March, and which they probably now wish they could draw a do-over button for, also contributed to the weak results.

Zynga also revised their outlook for the full year rather dramatically, forecasting revenue of between $1.15 and $1.23 billion, a steep drop from their April estimate of between $1.43 and $1.50 billion.

"A slight reduction in guidance would've been understandable, but this kind of reduction is mind-boggling," said Arvind Bhatia, Sterne, Agee, and Leach analyst.

Not only did Zynga's mind boggling financial shortcomings and revisions hit their own stock hard, they also had an effect on the stock of Facebook itself, which relies on social games for a large chunk of its own revenue. Facebook shares shed 6.3% of their value following the rather underwhelming results from Zynga.

With Facebook's changes likely having a negative impact on Zynga's largest games for quite some time, the company appears in need of finding new platforms to house their games. Zynga is also dipping its toes into the online gambling sector in an effort to diversify its portfolio.

The real question though is whether social gaming is simply running out of steam. A game does not lose 75% of its player base in a few months without deeper underlying issues that go well beyond those Zynga would like to pin the blame on.

What do you think? Is the social gaming fad finally ending? Or can social games evolve and stay relevant? Get 10 Mobile & Apps experience points by commenting below.