The deal between Activision Blizzard and King should be made final in Spring, 2016.
If you thought Microsoft buying Minecraft developer Mojang for $2.5 billion was a lot of money… well, i’ve got some news for you. Activision Blizzard, the parent company behind both Blizzard Entertainment and Activision has just announced its purchase of Candy Crush Saga developer King, for an eye-popping $5.9 billion.
It’s a lot of money for a developer that doesn’t have the greatest reputation in the gaming world, but when you look at the numbers it certainly makes sense from a business perspective. King’s games have over 500 million monthly active users, which makes them a metric fucktonne of money.
“Other than YouTube or Facebook there isn’t a worldwide network that has a bigger number of audience members [than King],” said Bobby Kotick, Activision’s chief executive. “A big part of the opportunity is to explore the intellectual property that exists at Activision Blizzard and see if it makes sense in that network.”
The acquisition has to go through approval in Ireland, where King is based, but Activision says they anticipate that everything will be official by spring of 2016.
Source: The Financial Times
