Activision Blizzard is purchasing Candy Crush Saga developer King for an eye-watering 5.9 billion dollars. If you think that’s a ridiculous sum, remember that we’re talking about a pretty ridiculous property.
In the spring of 2016, publishing giant Activision Blizzard expects to finalize a deal to bring one of the most successful mobile gaming companies of all time into the fold. This is one of the biggest purchases in gaming history and promises to bring some serious regular revenue with it. Candy Crush Saga alone currently makes nearly a million dollars every day.
Half a billion active users of King’s products have managed to make the company absurdly profitable. Microsoft made news when it purchased Mojang for $2.5 billion, sending shockwaves through the gaming media at large, but now Activision’s buyout handily dwarfs that figure. To put that in perspective, Minecraft has sold over 21 million copies of the PC version alone; nearly 100 million people play Candy Crush Saga on a daily basis.
These are the guys who tried — and to some extent succeeded — to trademark the word “candy” and “saga”, despite the fact that their game is an unapologetic re-skin of a much smaller indie title. Their legal tiffs are industry legend. If Activision is planning on doing more than raking in residual profits, they’ve got an uphill PR battle ahead of them.
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