Social gaming is clearly becoming the story of 2009.  It seems that users everywhere are flocking to social games on Facebook and MySpace to burn countless hours of gameplay.  Social gaming is big business, and the leader of this emerging industry so far is Zynga – publishers of Farmville, Mafia Wars and Fishville.  Today, Zynga announced it has surpassed its 100 millionth member and is rumored to be valued over $1 billion.  Not bad for the 2 year old gaming startup.

The San Francisco-based company has become the biggest developer on Facebook and the undisputed leader of the emerging social games market.  What’s even more remarkable is the speed of growth for the newest games.  For example Cafe World, launched in September, has grown to over 9 million daily active uses.  That means in a given day, 9 million users will log into the game. Fishville, launched earlier this month, already has 6 million daily active users.

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As we reported a few weeks ago, EA has been chomping at the bit to enter the social gaming space in a big way.  Today they made it official and announced the acquisition of Playfish for up to $400 million.  As part of the deal, EA will pay Playfish $275 million up front, $25 million in an earn-out agreement, and up to another $100 million based on achieving performance milestones through December 31, 2011.  London-based Playfish has raised $21 million from Accel Partners and Index Ventures, and has estimated revenues of $75 million.

Social gaming has been growing significantly over the last year as platforms like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter have enabled developers to reach large audiences quickly and virally.  EA’s purchase of Playfish marks a the first major deal in the social gaming space with players like Zynga and Playdom watching attentively.

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