Candy Crush Saga hits $27.4 billion revenue milestone, maker King says

LONDON – Candy Crush Saga, the matching game played by millions on their commute, has reached $20 billion (S$27.4 billion) in revenue since its 2012 launch, maker King said, adding that it would soon release levels up to 15,000 for the most dedicated players.

First appearing on a website, the game shifted to Facebook and then mobile, where it took off and has now been downloaded five billion times.

Candy Crush pioneered the “freemium” model, in which the game is free but players can spend money to boost their performance or can watch ads to gain moves.

King president Tjodolf Sommestad said Candy Crush Saga and the game developer’s other titles such as Farm Heroes Saga showed that mobile games could have enduring appeal.

“We’ve proven to ourselves and to the industry that it is possible to reignite games that are years old and keep them relevant for a decade or longer, and break records even a decade in,” Mr Sommestad said in an interview.

Candy Crush general manager Todd Green said the game was constantly updated to make it more satisfying, from optimising the tiny bounce when candies land in the grid to adding new levels, including the 15,000 milestone.

Candy Crush has been the top-grossing franchise in US app stores for the past six years, a fact Mr Sommestad said underlined both the success of King’s strategy and the challenge for new game developers.

“We do make an effort to build new games, but the bar is very high and it takes a lot to launch a new game nowadays,” he said. “Candy Crush took us a few months to build, but we added 10 years of development after that.”

King has been owned since 2016 by Activision Blizzard,

the United States company behind Call of Duty that has agreed a US$69 billion takeover by Microsoft.

King contributed $747 million in net revenue in the second quarter, 31 per cent of Activision’s total. REUTERS