The crazy story of candy crush

it has been hailed as one of the most

successful and significant mobile games

of the 21st centurya game that's so

simple yet so addictive

and one that's beloved by players of all

ages

since its launch in 2012 candy crush

saga has been downloaded and played

by

millions all over the world 10 years

later it remains one of the most popular

mobile games ever and is still regularly

updated by its developers with new

levels and features but like any suCcess

story the road to sweet victory for

candy crush was not a smooth one

today we take a closer look at that road

as we follow the journey of candy crush

from being just another game to

becoming

a global phenomenon

this is the full story of candy crush

when we talk about the most popular

games in the world chances are these

games were either made in the u.s the uk

or japan

but the seeds for candy crush didn't

come from any of these three countries

instead they were planted in sweden by a

gaming development company called

king

founded in 2003 king started off as

midas player and was established by sixpeople sebastian knutson

patrick stein

thomas hartwig

lars mark gren

toby rowland

and ricardo zacconi

like any other startup the company had

to face a lot of struggles right from

the get-go the most prominent of these

was trying and failing to secure funding

the company's financial woes almost led

them to folding within the same year of

their founding

fortunately around christmas time in

2003 the company received funding from

melvin morris the founder of the dating

website uday.com and zaccone's former

boss instead dating website

midas player went on to develop more

than 200 games which can be played on

their web portal they also partnered

with sites such as yahoo and aol which

allowed their games to be played on

these sites aside from their own the

strategy proved to be a success and by

2005 the company began seeing profits

that same year they rebranded

themselves

as king.com

a couple of years later an upcoming

platform started incorporating games2:21

into his website it was an opportunity

that king cannot miss

that platform was none other than

facebook which was still in its toddler

stage at the time

for the young ones who were watching

2:32

yes

2:34

facebook was once popular because of

its

2:36

games

the popularity peaked in 2009 thanks to

a game developed by rival company

zynga

called farmville

2:45

facebook began attracting more players

to their platform including the ones

playing on king's games on their web

portal and on yah0o

2:53

this posed a threat for king's business

but also presented a new opportunity to

explore soon the company started

developing games with the intent of

having them on facebook

they use their own web portal to test

what games can be a potential hit once

they land on the booming social media

platform in 2011 king managed to crack

facebook with the release of their game

3:16 bubble witch saga which became one of

the most played games on facebook at

3:18

the

time

this was a huge win for king back then

however it would soon be largelvto score the most points by matching

three or more candies of the same type

horizontally or vertically to eliminate

them from the game board

king revamped the mechanics for the

game's facebook release by

incorporating

the saga format that made bubble witch

saga popular in the saga format instead

of playing for points the objective is

to clear a level and advance to the next

one by achieving an objective within a

limited number of moves

objectives included clearing a number of

candies removing frosting or getting a

number of fruits down at the bottomn of

the board among others

as the player progresses to higher

levels the game becomes more

challenging

the saga format allowed players to

compare their progress with others which

gave the game an extra social

component

and boosted its popularity among players

additionally candy crush saga banked on

a freemium model where players are

given

the option to purchase actions items or

bonuses that will help them clear theharder levels thanks to all of these

candy crush saga was a huge hit it

gained millions of players within the

first few weeks after its release

eventually it topped zinger's farm bill

2 on facebook and recorded an average

of

40 million monthly plays

king had managed to top itself with

candy crush saga

it would do so again in a few months

when they explored another territory to

conquer

in november of 2012 seven months after

launching the game on facebook candy

crush saga was made available for

mobile

the game immediately achieved sky-high

download numbers that were far beyond

what king expected according to

sebastian nutson downloads of the game

that november already met king's

projections for the following year

knutson even revealed that the company

gave candy crusha six to nine month

shelf life before its popularity buns

out which was obviously a huge

underestimation on their part a yearinto its initial launch candy crush saga

reached around a billion downloads on

facebook android and ios and was

bringing in around 600 000 daily thanks

to in-app purchases

around this time it was often near if

not at the top of the most downloaded

games on both google play store and

apple's app store by december of 2023

the game had a monthly average of 324

million unique users

handicrush saga was on a roll

establishing itself as one of the most

beloved mobile games of its time

its success allowed king to eventually

file an ipo on march 26 2014 a mere two

years after candy crush was first

launched on facebook eventually king

was

purchased