Activision Blizzard acquires Candy Crush maker for $5.9b
Deal bigger than Disney's acquisition of Lucasfilm.
Video game publishing giant Activision Blizzard will buy King Digital Entertainment, the creator of popular mobile game Candy Crush for $US5.9 billion.
Activision Blizzard publishes a number of high grossing games on console and PC platforms such as Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, Destiny and Heartstone.
The California-based company says the acquisition will boost its mobile porfolio.
“Mobile gaming is the largest and fastest-growing opportunity for interactive entertainment and we will have one of the world's most successful mobile game companies and its talented teams providing great content to new customers, in new geographies throughout the world,” Activision Blizzard chief executive Bobby Kotick said in a statement.
“King has a truly fantastic management team and more than 1600 incredibly talented employees and we are excited to welcome them into the Activision Blizzard family.”
Activision says it now has half a billion monthly active users in 196 countries.
For the second quarter of 2015, only 5% of Activision Blizzard’s revenue came from mobile and other (toys, accessories and miscellaneous) but for the third quarter this increased to 13%.
Candy Crush is the crown jewel of King, accounting for approximately a third of revenue. Most of its games operate on a freemium model, where users can play for free but pay for additions.
The deal dwarfs other recent entertainment acquisitions such as Disney buying Lucasfilm for $US4 billion, Microsoft purchasing Minecraft for $US2.5 billion and Amazon acquiring Twitch for $US970 million.
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Staff reporter
Wed, 04 Nov 2015
Wed, 04 Nov 2015
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Activision Blizzard acquires Candy Crush maker for $5.9b
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