In other words, Zynga screwed up. But it didn’t really cost them anything since it’s all virtual goods. It seems like the smart thing to do would be to simply turn the code off and move on with their lives. But instead the Zynga team really seemed to think that they had been wronged by their users, and took proactive steps to punish and frustrate them. Instead of seeing passionate users engaging with the game, Zynga saw people trying to take advantage of them and responded by going on the attack. Terrible move. These are your customers, not your enemies.
Interesting sequence of events concerning Zynga and Mafia Wars as reported by TechCrunch. Regardless of the rhetoric used in their communication with the players, I do see why Zynga made the decision they made. There seems to be only a single comment to this post that refers to the game design aspect of what happened. Fake or not, pumping currency into an economy lessens the value of the currency, whether the action of pumping/leaking costs anybody anything. This contributes to inflation, and thus to sales of virtual goods within said economy. The case serves as an example of how monetization design is embedded into game design, and how fragile a virtual economy can be if inflation gets out of hand - therefore, what might be 'terrible' (as TechCrunch says) towards your customers might be healthy for your game economy.