

So let’s flash back to the heady year of 2011, when smartphones still competed with Facebook gaming, and web-browser games were still a significant part of the business.

Casual, skill-based games were something King was doing for quite some time and leading in that small segment.”Ĭandy Crush’s journey to success is a relatively simple one, but requires an understanding of the state of gaming at the time. In an interview with Venturebeat after the fact, Tommy Palm, one of the four developers behind Candy Crush Saga spoke about the company’s early years. The popularity of social network games in 2009, on sites such as Facebook, encouraged King to begin branching out with titles that they had already developed for the browser market. Initially founded as “” and offering browser games, this new site would be rebranded to “” in 2005, when the site first turned a profit. These include Thomas Hartwig, Sebastian Knutsson, Lars Markgren and Patrik Stymne, who had all worked previously with co-founders Riccardo Zacconi and Toby Rowland on a website called Spray, a web portal similar to their new venture. The company was founded by a number of investors rather than game design alumni or existing veterans of the industry. They’re also the focus of the ongoing - as of the time of writing - Activision-Blizzard acquisition.įrom building a portfolio of hundreds of smaller titles on browsers, to being one of the biggest developers in mobile gaming, this is the story of King.Īnother resident of the Nordic countries, King originated in Stockholm, Sweden. The poster-child for mobile success and unprecedented growth it’s undeniable that developer King provided the blueprint for massive money on mobile.

As far as puzzle games on mobile go, few are as successful - or as addictive - as King’s Candy Crush Saga. This time we're touching on a real cornerstone of mobile gaming. Once more we return to the archive of famous mobile titles that made the industry what it is today.
