Candy Crush Saga remains at the top of the mobile charts even more than a decade after its launch. King has now revealed that the game has reached a new milestone.
UPDATE (September 28): King eventually announced the new milestone on its official website, saying that Candy Crush Saga franchise surpassed $20 billion in lifetime revenue. So this includes not only the original Candy Crush Saga, but also other titles in the series, such as Candy Crush Jelly Saga, Candy Crush Friends Saga, and Candy Crush Soda Saga.
In an interview with Reuters, King announced that Candy Crush Saga had reached $20 billion in revenue since April 2012. So this includes versions across all platforms, such as Facebook, iOS, Android, and Windows.
The game has also generated 5 billion downloads in more than 11 years.
“We’ve proven to ourselves and to the industry that it is possible to reignite games that are years old and keep them relevant for a decade or longer, and break records even a decade in,” King president Tjodolf Sommestad told Reuters.
Although the studio continues to put a lot of effort into developing new titles, the Candy Crush IP remains its core, ever-evolving, and top-grossing product. Sommestad noted that “the bar is very high and it takes a lot to launch a new game nowadays,” adding that “Candy Crush took us a few months to build but we added 10 years of development after that.”
Over the past several years, King has killed several games, including 2021’s runner Crash Bandicoot: On the Run. The title reached $1.2 million in revenue in its first month, but after that the numbers continued to steadily decline.
However, even with just the Candy Crush IP, King remains the leading publisher in the mobile games market. It has been the top-grossing mobile franchise in the US app stores for the last six years.
It is also a valuable asset in the Activision Blizzard King group. In Q2 2023 alone, King generated $747 million in net revenue, or 33% of the company’s total, with 238 million monthly active users (MAU).
Successful mobile games are one of the main reasons Microsoft has decided to acquire Activision Blizzard. In addition to Candy Crush, the company’s portfolio also includes Call of Duty: Mobile (over $3 billion in lifetime revenue). With these titles on board, Microsoft could have increased its share of global mobile gaming revenues from just 0.3% in 2021 to over 4%.