--- description: Activision, publisher of franchises such as Call of Duty, will purchase King Digital Entertainment, creator of Candy Crush, for $5.9 billion title: Why the Company Behind 'Call of Duty' Spent $5.9 Billion on 'Candy Crush' image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8de947dc07139514/69886f53ab6d77da8a6a6f77/gettyimages-470127791.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Business](/section/business/) ## Business Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close * [Video Games](/tag/video-games/) ## Video Games Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close # Here's Why the Company Behind _Call of Duty_ Just Spent $5.9 Billion on _Candy Crush_ by [Chris Morris / Fortune](/author/fortune/) ## Chris Morris / Fortune Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Nov 3, 2015 1:39 PM CUT  The "Candy Crush Saga" game is displayed on an Apple Inc. iPhone 5s and iPad Air in this arranged photograph in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Tuesday, Feb. 18, 2014. The "Candy Crush Saga" game is displayed on an Apple Inc. iPhone 5s and iPad Air in this arranged photograph in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Tuesday, Feb. 18, 2014.Bloomberg—Bloomberg via Getty Images by [Chris Morris / Fortune](/author/fortune/) ## Chris Morris / Fortune Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Nov 3, 2015 1:39 PM CUT Activision Blizzard, which already owns many of the biggest franchises in PC and console gaming, wants to cement a leadership role in the mobile video game industry. [Late on Monday news broke](http://fortune.com/2015/11/03/activision-king-digital/ "undefined") that the publisher of franchises such as _Call of Duty_ and _World of Warcraft_ will purchase King Digital Entertainment, creator of _Candy Crush Saga_, for $5.9 billion. The move strengthens Activision’s position as the largest publisher in the interactive entertainment business. “The combined revenues and profits solidify our position as the largest, most profitable standalone company in interactive entertainment,” said Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick in a statement. “With a combined global network of more than half a billion monthly active users, our potential to reach audiences around the world on the device of their choosing enables us to deliver great games to even bigger audiences than ever before.” With the buyout, Activision is able to address one of its chief areas of weakness: mobile. Although, it does so at a steep price. To put the $5.9 billion price tag in perspective, Amazon [spent $1.1 billion](http://fortune.com/2014/08/25/amazon-to-pay-over-1-billion-for-videogame-streaming-site-twitch/ "undefined") for red-hot video game streaming site Twitch last August. Facebook [paid just $2 billion](http://fortune.com/2014/03/25/facebook-buys-oculus-vr-a-virtual-reality-gaming-company-for-2-billion/ "undefined") for virtual reality leader Oculus in March 2014\. And Disney’s purchase of the Lucasfilm and the _Star Wars_ franchise in 2012 came at a now [seemingly bargain price of $4.05 billion](http://fortune.com/2012/11/30/the-force-is-strong-with-disneys-lucasfilm-buy/ "undefined"). ### See The 15 Best Video Game Graphics of 2014  Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. Activision's futuristic first-person shooter in which players take on a rogue private military company uses a brand new engine built specifically for PCs and new-gen consoles to handle its cutting-edge lighting, animation and physics. Sledgehammer Games/Activision  Far Cry 4\. This pulled back shot of fictional Himalayan region Kyrat is in-game, believe it or not, rendered with an overhauled version of the engine Ubisoft used to design Far Cry 3. Ubisoft  The Last of Us: Remastered. Naughty Dog's meditation on the worst (and best) of humanity is built on technology that reaches back through the studio's pulp-adventure Uncharted series. The graphics are so impressive, TIME recently assigned a conflict photographer to photograph inside the game. Ashley Gilbertson for TIME  Alien: Isolation Built from scratch, the Alien: Isolation engine's outstanding deep space visuals all but replicate the set design of Alien film concept artists H.R. Giger and Ron Cobb's work. The Creative Assembly  Assassin's Creed Unity. Ubisoft says it "basically remade the whole rendering engine" in its AnvilNext design tool to handle the studio's meticulous recreation of Paris during the French Revolution. Ubisoft  Child of Light Inspired by filmmakers like Hayao Miyazaki and artist Yoshitaka Amano, Child of Light's hand-drawn artwork puts the lie to presumptions that graphical richness depends on shader support or polygon counts. Ubisoft  Destiny Built from scratch by ex-Halo studio Bungie, Destiny's game engine was designed to scale across the next decade, says the studio. Bungie  Mario Kart 8 Nintendo's kart-racer for Wii U reminds us that raw horsepower is just a facet of crafting a beautiful game world. Nintendo  Infamous Second Son Sucker Punch's freeform Seattle-based superhero adventure models all sorts of minutia, from the intricate wrinkling of an aged character's face to the way eyelids stick, slightly, before separating when characters blink. Sucker Punch Productions  Monument Valley Escher-like at first glance, Ustwo's mind-bending puzzler was also inspired by posters, bonsai plants, arabic calligraphy and filmmaker Tarsem Singh's The Fall. Ustwo  Grand Theft Auto V Rockstar's remastered crime spree opus was crafted from an in-house engine first employed in a game that simulated table tennis. Rockstar  Titanfall Respawn Entertainment  Forza Horizon 2 Turn 10's Euro-racer actually models light refracted through drops of moisture, the render tech plausibly simulating something as intangible but essential as the earth’s atmosphere. Microsoft Studios/Turn 10 Studios  80 Days Inkle's anti-colonialist vamp on Jules Verne's famous novel uses crisp art deco imagery inspired by travel posters to unfurl 80 Days' tale of intrepid globetrotters Monsieur Fogg and his valet Passepartout. Inkle  Tomb Raider Crystal Dynamics' radical reboot of its popular series about an athletic archaeologist uses a modified version of the engine that powered Tomb Raider: Legend in 2006. Square Enix Activision’s franchises—which also includes _Destiny, Guitar Hero,_ and _Skylanders—_are strong. But Activision has been late to the mobile revolution and slow to embrace mobile gaming as the category has grown in size. (Mobile games, in the 12 months ending Sept. 2015, accounted for [19% of the total dollars spend](http://fortune.com/2015/11/02/biff-pow-bam-batman-beatdown-is-latest-blow-for-pc-gamers/ "undefined") on video game software, according to The NPD Group.) Rather than investing its own resources, the publisher has partnered with mobile-centric companies (including Tencent) to bring select franchises to mobile in emerging territories. In January, for instance, the two companies launched _Call of Duty Online_ in China. Aside from _Skylanders_, most of Activision’s major franchises don’t have a mobile presence in the U.S. One exception: Blizzard’s _Hearthstone,_ a PC and mobile game that has attracted more than 25 million players. Hearthstone’s success may have been a key catalyst for Activision’s pursuit of King. Blizzard’s games appeal to a wide audience, but it’s nowhere close to the size of the _Candy Crush_ player base. King’s games boasted 474 million monthly active users in the third quarter of 2015\. (During its most recent earnings call in September, [Activision said only that its](http://fortune.com/2015/09/08/activision-blizzard-joins-sp-500/ "undefined") MAUs had grown 35% year over year.) With the purchase of King, Activision gains an in-house team of proven mobile veterans who can not only expand their own hit games, but help the company exploit its own franchises. “We believe that the acquisition will position us very well for the next phase of our company’s evolution,” said Riccardo Zacconi, CEO of King. “We will combine our expertise in mobile and free-to-play with Activision Blizzard’s world-class brands … to bring the best games in the world to millions of players worldwide.” The $18 per share proposed purchase price represents a 20% premium over King’s closing price on Oct. 30\. But it’s still $4.50 per share lower than its IPO price. ([The company made its debut](http://fortune.com/2014/03/26/investors-lukewarm-on-king-ipo/ "undefined") on the New York Stock Exchange in March 2014.) Under Activision, King will operate as an independent unit. Its senior executives will sign long-term employment contracts with terms that are very similar to those used during Activision’s purchase of Blizzard in 2008. The acquisition is expected to be completed next spring. The original _Candy Crush Saga_ is still the fourth highest-grossing game in Apple’s App Store three years after its release. Its follow-up _Candy Crush Soda_, though not as successful as its predecessor, is the number six title one year after its release. Yet investors have been critical of King’s performance and its inability to launch another _Candy Crush Saga-_sized hit and have penalized the price of the company’s shares. Kotick and Activision have shown a remarkable eye for selecting new franchises and ensuring that existing ones thrive; the Activision-King deal will likely excite the larger company’s investors. Activision says it expects the King unit to generate more than $36 billion in revenue by the end of 2015, and grow cumulatively by more than 50% from 2015 to 2019. The acquisition is the second major move into a new area by Activision since the company [extracted itself from Vivendi’s ownership](http://fortune.com/2015/10/15/vivendi-reenters-video-game-industry/ "undefined"). In late October, it announced plans to [launch an e-sports division](http://fortune.com/2015/10/22/activision-blizzard-new-esports-division/ "undefined") headed by the former CEO of ESPN and NFL Network, positioning itself to be a fast growing industry that Colin Sebastian of R.W. Baird expects to produce revenues of $1.8 billion by 2020. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4097969/activision-king-candy-crush/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4097969/activision-king-candy-crush/"},"headline":"Here's Why the Company Behind Call of Duty Just Spent $5.9 Billion on Candy Crush","datePublished":"2015-11-03T13:39:43.000Z","dateModified":"2026-05-11T04:44:20.242Z","description":"It's all about mobile","url":"https://time.com/4097969/activision-king-candy-crush/","keywords":["Video Games","Tech"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8de947dc07139514/69886f53ab6d77da8a6a6f77/gettyimages-470127791.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Chris Morris / Fortune"}],"articleSection":"Business","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8de947dc07139514/69886f53ab6d77da8a6a6f77/gettyimages-470127791.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Candy Crush Game Maker King Announces IPO to List in New York","caption":"Candy Crush Game Maker King Announces IPO to List in New York","creditText":"Bloomberg—Bloomberg via Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/business/","name":"Business"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/video-games/","name":"Video Games"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4097969/activision-king-candy-crush/","name":"Here's Why the Company Behind Call of Duty Just Spent $5.9 Billion on Candy Crush"}}]}] ```