Activision Buys Candy Crush Maker for $5.9 Billion

There is hardly anyone on Facebook who hasn’t received a Candy Crush request everyday for the past couple of years. And there is hardly anyone who hasn’t sent a request either, which gives weight to the first allegation, actually.

Which all makes the culprit behind an existence as mischievous as Candy Crush so valuable. Activision Blizzard, the firm behind titles as popular and varied as “Call of Duty”, “Guitar Hero” and “World of Warcraft” has decided to acquire King Digital for an impressive $5.9 billion in a bid to make a move into the lucrative (freemium) mobile gaming market.

That amounts to a price of $18 per share, a 20% premium over the current share price lower than the IPO price.

King, the makers of Candy Crush, generated over $530 million in revenue last quarter

How that will happen is yet to be seen, for Candy Crush is pretty much a dying trend at present. But for Activision, which earned only 5% of its revenue from mobile (and other sources), King with $530 million in revenue last quarter can prove a valuable asset.

More important is the fact that King currently has 340 million users divided between all its time-wasters, even though only 2.2 percent of them pay anything at all. The figure in hard cash still amounted to $119 million. However, the numbers sure are falling fast.

Riccardo Zacconi, CEO of King Digital says:

We believe that the acquisition will position us very well for the next phase of our company’s evolution. We will combine our expertise in mobile and free-to-play with Activision Blizzard’s world-class brands … to bring the best games in the world to millions of players worldwide.

The company will continue to operate independently in the future. With its massive experience in the mobile industry, it can help Activision not only with its own offerings, but also in the development of new offerings for its buyer’s world-renowned franchises.