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Is Farm Heroes the Next Candy Crush?

May 2, 2014 by Candy Crush Cheats

King Games Pushes Match-3 Mobile Farming App

Tommy Palm, gaming guru for King Digital Entertainment, has a problem on his hands. How do you guide a company like King, whose meteoric rise to the top of the charts has recently tapered off into a drooping IPO? It’s common knowledge that King’s revenue stream is based almost entirely around Candy Crush. If they can’t come up with dynamic new ideas for games, King will be an outdated relic inside of a year.

While King attempts to make inroads in Asia by promoting Candy Crush, they’re hopeful that Western audiences will migrate to another of their games: Farm Heroes Saga. Palm spoke to Mobile Entertainment recently at King’s pop-up farm in London, which promotes both urban farming and the company’s “#BeAFarmHero” campaign, hawking Farm Heroes as a “significantly different” game than Candy Crush.

If you laughed at that, you’re not alone. Farm Heroes operates exactly like Candy Crush in the fundamentals of its gameplay. The differences between the two games lie in strategy, since boosters don’t behave in exactly the same way. However, to their credit, King is more generous with free boosters in Farm Heroes than Candy Crush.

Still, Palm was nothing if not candid with the press. King will continue producing match-three puzzle games far into the future, Palm said, “because that’s what we’re good at.” On one level, it’s good that King recognizes a good thing when they see it. They clearly did something right to tap into a cultural niche in the way they have. But it’s worth considering how long King’s audiences will be content to play games that are basically the same rehashed concept. Sooner or later, millions of dedicated Candy Crushers will be hungry for a game that pushes the envelope. Is Farm Heroes really going to be an adequate response? Tell us what you think in the comments.

King Versus Zynga: Will Either Survive?

March 25, 2014 by Candy Crush Cheats

Connecting the Dots Between Gaming Giants

It’s the eve of King Digital Entertainment’s long-awaited initial public offering (IPO), when the legendary creators of Candy Crush Saga will make their company available for purchase on the New York Stock Exchange. Though they’ll have to answer to their shareholders, King’s owners stand to make a staggering amount of money in the deal. And as we’ve discussed in the past few weeks, there are pros and cons to this move for King. But this monumental event doesn’t exist in a vacuum–it’s very similar to what happened to Zynga several years ago.

For those of you who don’t remember Zynga, we’ll back up and explain. Zynga is the company behind one of the first “social games” as we’ve come to know them–FarmVille. Founded in 2007, Zynga secured millions of dollars in venture capital, which it used to develop several games for Facebook. In early 2009, it became the biggest Facebook app developer before debuting FarmVille later in the year. FarmVille catapulted the company to Internet fame, and Zynga filed for a billion-dollar IPO in 2011. Since then, however, their revenue and stock price has plummeted, trading at just $4.83 USD as of this writing.

Writing for CNN Money, Dan Primack compiled a table comparing Zynga and King’s most recent financial data, and the results seem to be in King’s favor:

Clearly, King has the advantage over Zynga in many arenas. The most substantial of these in the long term is most likely the number of employees each company has; Zynga employs over two thousand people, while King employs less than seven hundred. When Zynga went public, it suffered a loss of over half a billion dollars in compensation plans for its employees, an expenditure which King will not need to worry about quite so much.

Still, there are more similarities here than differences in how both companies have quickly risen in the gaming industry on the back of a few immensely popular games. King derives the vast majority of its income from Candy Crush, even more than Zynga relied on FarmVille. It’s no wonder investors are skittish about King’s IPO tomorrow–but there’s only one way to find out for sure what will happen: wait! We’ll bring you all the news every day.

King Digital Goes Public This Week

March 24, 2014 by Candy Crush Cheats

Looking at Candy Crush by the Numbers

With only two days left until King Digital Entertainment becomes the latest gaming company to be publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange, investors are less certain than ever about the company’s future. As of Wednesday, the creators of Candy Crush will be selling stakes in their rapidly-growing company, and many people are anxious to get on board, even for $24 USD per share. King’s owners stand to control a company worth over $7 billion less than 48 hours from now–but will their IPO (Initial Public Offering) really go off without a hitch?

Ever since King first announced they were applying to be publicly traded, financial analysts have been of two minds about whether this is the right path for the company that brought us Papa Pear, Farm Heroes, Pet Rescue, and of course the unavoidable Candy Crush Saga. King certainly thinks this is the best choice–in their prospectus last month, they pointed out that in 2013, their net income was nearly $2 billion. This has mostly been due to the success of Candy Crush, which has crested 53 million daily users on Facebook alone. (The total number of daily users across platforms is approximately 93 million worldwide.)

Most of that money comes from a dedicated core set of players who will gladly shell out for extra lives and boosters in Candy Crush. But many analysts have cautioned that, despite its meteoric rise, King won’t last long in the video game industry unless it can prove it has cracked the code to making a long series of popular games, rather than coasting on just one. King itself admitted in its prospectus that should its audience drift to other casual games, or stop making in-app purchases, their revenue stream will dry up quickly.

But, as CNNMoney notes, the last few years have been great for IPOs. Last year saw the most IPOs since 2000, and most of this year’s new stocks have increased in value by up to 35%. But this doesn’t necessarily mean that King will meet with the same fortune. The same article notes that nearly 75% of recently public companies are not profitable, echoing many analyst’s fears that King will go the way of Zynga, the game company whose stock prices plummeted from $10 to $2 nearly overnight.

Will you be among the first to invest in King this Wednesday, or are you withholding judgment? Tell us your opinion in the comments!

Candy Crush for Facebook Cracks 57 Million Daily Players

March 5, 2014 by Candy Crush Cheats

Beats Out Spotify, Microsoft, & More

It’s no big secret that Candy Crush Saga’s incredible worldwide popularity has made it one of the most played games of all time.

And of course, nowhere is that popularity more obvious than on Facebook, the world’s largest social networking site, which reports that Candy Crush is at the top of its apps list month after month. But now AppData has started revealing how many daily active users (DAU) each app has, and the results may shock you.

If you can believe it, Candy Crush Saga has over 57 million DAU–57,036,085 on average, according to AppData. Not only is that far and away the most DAU of any app on Facebook, it’s more than the next four apps combined. And those four are no lightweights. King Games, makers of Candy Crush, own two of them: the extremely similar Farm Heroes Saga and Pet Rescue Saga games. The other two are the Spotify and Windows Live apps, which is what really takes our breath away. How did King’s candy-matching game get to be so popular that it eclipsed two of the most prominent technology manufacturers and music services on the entire Web?

We might be hyperventilating a little too early–after all, Spotify’s popularity has waned on Facebook mostly due to its users’ preference for the mobile app and desktop program. Still, by AppData’s count, King’s games are responsible for well over 85.5 million daily players on Facebook, an incredible number by anyone’s standards. (In contrast, the online gaming community/distribution system Steam only has 65 million users total as of last October.) That’s definitely going to affect how King’s IPO is valued this year.

Are you one of the 57 million people who play Candy Crush on Facebook? Do you prefer to play on your phone? Tell us what version you like best in the comments!

King Games Abandons “Candy” Trademark (Sort Of)

March 4, 2014 by Candy Crush Cheats

“Candy Crusher” Paves Way for King in U.S. Courts

King Games, makers of our beloved Candy Crush, has come under fire recently for its increasingly controversial decisions–first for trademarking the words “candy” and “saga” in the United States and Europe, then for taking legal action against game developers who many feel have done nothing wrong. These controversies may die down a little now that King has filed paperwork to withdraw their trademark on the word “candy” in the U.S.

There are many ways to interpret this move, especially since King filed for an IPO not long ago, but before we jump to conclusions, let’s read King’s statement on the matter:

“King has withdrawn its trademark application for Candy in the U.S., which we applied for in February 2013 before we acquired the early rights to Candy Crusher. Each market that King operates in is different with regard to IP. We feel that having the rights to Candy Crusher is the best option for protecting Candy Crush in the U.S. market. This does not affect our E.U. trademark for Candy and we continue to take all appropriate steps to protect our IP.” (via Neoseeker)

blog-candy-trademark — via AppBattleground

For those of you who are lost, we’ll explain. Candy Crusher is an app that was made in 2009 for Blackberry devices and which had no relation to Candy Crush. However, by owning the earlier trademark, King can now claim to have the rights to candy-based games as of 2009. This means that any games with similar themes made after that year could be seen by U.S. courts as being in violation of King’s intellectual property. If that sounds pretty sneaky, that’s because it is.

It seems as though King wants to repair its reputation in the public eye after its fights with many independent developers have left it looking like a bully. Though King’s actions against games like CandySwipe and The Banner Saga certainly haven’t diminished its user base, no company wants to make this many enemies. But since King will clearly hang onto its ownership of “candy” in Europe, and its headlock on the word “saga” is still very much in place. We think it’s more likely that King feels more legally secure in the U.S. now, and just wants to focus more of its legal attention on European “infringers.”

What do you think about King’s legal “saga”? Will you keep playing Candy Crush, swear off buying boosters, or leave the game altogether? Tell us how you feel in the comments!