Founded in Sweden in 2003, King is a video game developer that is most famous for its blockbuster gaming hit, Candy Crush Saga. The developer’s revenue reached almost 2.79 billion U.S. dollars in 2022, a far cry from revenue of less than 60 million U.S. dollars in 2010.

King of the developers In its early years in the social gaming world, King relied on in-game advertising and micro-transactions to generate revenue. The latter enabled players to make in-game purchases to improve their virtual world or help them past a particularly tricky level. However, in a move to win over its legion of fans, the company decided to remove all in-game advertising in June 2013 and focused on micro-transactions to bring in the money. This strategy seemed to pay off as the monthly active users of King continued to increase and peaked at 550 million users at the beginning of 2015. However, the MAU figure has been steadily falling in the ensuing years and the company was acquired in February 2016 by Activision Blizzard, famed for games such as World of Warcraft and Overwatch, in a deal worth almost six billion U.S. dollars. The publisher has since seen an upturn in its fortunes and registered record operating income of 740 million U.S. dollars in 2019.

Candy Crush Saga – King’s jewel in the crown The more than tenfold increase of King’s revenue between 2012 and 2013 is down to just one game – Candy Crush Saga. The colorful puzzle game became an overnight sensation and could be seen on smartphones across the world. While the game itself is free-to-play, users have the option of making in-game purchases to help them get past certain levels. This is where King’s micro-transaction revenue model truly paid off as player spending in Candy Crush mobile games worldwide reached over one billion U.S. dollars in 2022. Despite the fast-paced nature of mobile gaming and the new releases that hit our screens every day, Candy Crush Saga still remains one of the most popular free-to-play games on the market.

As of 2024, brothers Igor and Dmitry Bukhman, the founders of online gaming company Playrix, ranked as the wealthiest game developers in the United Kingdom, with a joint estimated net worth of 12.54 billion British pounds. Herman Narula, CEO of Improbable Games Limited, followed with a net worth of 780 million British pounds, while Italian businessman Riccardo Zacconi, CEO of King, the company behind the Candy Crush Saga, had a net worth of 410 million British pounds.

Developed by King, Candy Crush Saga is a puzzle video game in which players swap different types of candy on a game board in order to match three or more of the same type. The game was first released on Facebook in 2012 and has since become available on most mobile operating systems and on browser. Despite being in its tenth year on the market, the original Candy Crush Saga is still the leading game in the series, generating global revenues of over 1 billion U.S. dollars in 2024.

Candy Crush Saga is a free-to-play tile-matching video game first released by game developer King in April 2012. In the fourth quarter of 2024, the Candy Crush Saga mobile app grossed 265 million U.S. dollars, well below its all-time high in the second quarter of 2023. A sweet success story Candy Crush Saga was first launched as a social game on Facebook before making its transition to mobile, where it quickly became one of the highest-grossing mobile games of all time. Despite over a decade on the market, the popularity of the match-3 title is still unabated. The games publisher King quickly released several sequels, including Candy Crush Soda Saga (2014), Candy Crush Jelly Saga (2016), and Candy Crush Friends Saga (2018). All these casual gaming app titles are financially successful but have never reached the heights of the original game. The casual gaming genre Casual games are one of the most popular gaming genres worldwide, consistently ranking among the most downloaded and highest-grossing gaming apps. In October 2024, Block Blast! was the most downloaded free casual gaming app worldwide, generating more than 24 million combined downloads across Google Play and the Apple App Store. My Supermarket Simulator was ranked second with 20 million global downloads. In 2022, the hypercasual simulation subgenre accounted for 6.6 percent of all gaming app downloads in the United States, ahead of word and hypercasual runner games.

In the second quarter of 2023, social gaming company King (also known as King.com or King Digital Entertainment) had generated 747 million U.S. dollars in revenues. Popular titles include Candy Crush Saga, Farm Ville Saga as well as Bubble Witch Saga, all of which are monetized through in-game item purchases. King's gaming apps are available on Facebook as well as on mobile platforms.

Royal Match was the top-grossing puzzle game worldwide in February 2025, generating more than 124 million U.S. dollars through in-app purchase revenues. Candy Crush Saga was ranked second with 93 million U.S. dollars in monthly IAP revenue.

In the most recently reported fiscal year, Google's revenue amounted to 348.16 billion U.S. dollars. Google's revenue is largely made up by advertising revenue, which amounted to 264.59 billion U.S. dollars in 2024. As of October 2024, parent company Alphabet ranked first among worldwide internet companies, with a market capitalization of 2,02 billion U.S. dollars. Google’s revenue Founded in 1998, Google is a multinational internet service corporation headquartered in California, United States. Initially conceptualized as a web search engine based on a PageRank algorithm, Google now offers a multitude of desktop, mobile and online products. Google Search remains the company’s core web-based product along with advertising services, communication and publishing tools, development and statistical tools as well as map-related products. Google is also the producer of the mobile operating system Android, Chrome OS, Google TV as well as desktop and mobile applications such as the internet browser Google Chrome or mobile web applications based on pre-existing Google products. Recently, Google has also been developing selected pieces of hardware which ranges from the Nexus series of mobile devices to smart home devices and driverless cars. Due to its immense scale, Google also offers a crisis response service covering disasters, turmoil and emergencies, as well as an open source missing person finder in times of disaster. Despite the vast scope of Google products, the company still collects the majority of its revenue through online advertising on Google Site and Google network websites. Other revenues are generated via product licensing and most recently, digital content and mobile apps via the Google Play Store, a distribution platform for digital content. As of September 2020, some of the highest-grossing Android apps worldwide included mobile games such as Candy Crush Saga, Pokemon Go, and Coin Master.

In the year 2021, the digital content platform Google Play generated gross revenues of approximately 48 billion U.S. dollars through mobile apps. This is a global consumer spending increase of about 23 percent, compared to the previous year. With gross revenue reaching over 85.1 billion U.S. dollars, Apple’s App Store remained in the lead.

Leading apps on Google Play Store Some of the leading Google apps that can be found on the Play Store included Google Play Games and YouTube Music, however, with over 20 million downloads worldwide, Google Meet took the top spot in 2020. The most popular kind of app on the platform was by far the gaming app: in the first quarter of 2020 alone, gaming apps accounted for approximately 10 billion downloads. Tool and entertainment applications ranked second and third in terms of download count, respectively.

Leading mobile gaming apps Having generated over 100 million U.S. dollars in revenue worldwide, Coin Master was the leading mobile gaming app on the Google Play Store. Other successful and familiar gaming apps that could be found on many smartphones around the world included Pokémon GO, Candy Crush Saga, and PUBG MOBILE – NEW ERA.