Farmville Screenshot Zynga, the company behind "Farmville" and many other popular social games, are to form an alliance with Japanese investment firm

By far the most successful publisher on Facebook, Zynga's games are played by up to 252 million users a month, according to AppData. The majority of these players are from the US, where the popularity of social networking has rocketed over the past three years, and has coaxed many casual gamers into spending more time at their PC monitor.

Now Facebook's growth has started to slow down, Zynga's titles are beginning to lose traffic. The main reason for the company's suggested alliance with Softbank is so they can begin international expansions that'll help pick up the lag from the wilt in the market.

With projects such as Farmville.com, Zynga are becoming increasingly diverse in order to maintain their momentum. Moreover, many Asian gamers are used to playing games for free and having the option to pay real money for virtual goods- a business model that Zynga will no doubt have to adopt in order to dominate globally.

The alliance isn't officially announced as of yet, as a spokeswoman for Zynga stated, “We are focused on building the best social game experience for our customers and have no news to announce at this time.”