industry video game industry founded august 2003 ; 13 years ago 2003 08 founders lars markgren patrik stymne riccardo zacconi sebastian knutsson thomas hartwig toby rowland headquarters stockholm sweden area served worldwide key people riccardo zacconi ceo products candy crush saga revenue us 2.26 billion 2014 operating income us 661.00 million 2014 net income us 575.00 million 2014 number of employees 1400 parent activision blizzard subsidiaries king.com ltd website king.com king digital entertainment plc doing business as king is a social games company . king develops games for the web for mobile ios android windows phone facebook and windows 10 . 1 2 king is led by riccardo zacconi who has served in that role since co founding the company in 2003 . 3 gerhard florin is the current chairman of board . he took over from melvyn morris when he stepped down in november 2014 . the company has 1400 employees . 4 in 2013 it spent 110.5 million on research and development roughly 6 percent of sales . 5 on 23 february 2016 king was acquired by activision blizzard for 5.9 billion . 6 contents 1 history 1.1 trademark and cloning disputes 1.2 ipo 1.3 acquisition 1.4 key employees 2 games 2.1 candy crush saga 2.2 list of facebook games developed by king 2.3 ios games 2.4 android games 2.5 windows games 2.6 kakao games available in south korea 3 awards 4 see also 5 references 6 external links history edit prior to founding king zacconi and toby rowland worked together on udate.com a site created by melvyn morris . morris sold the site for 150 million in 2003 . 7 they joined forces with sebastian knutsson thomas hartwig lars markgren and patrik stymne to start king in 2003 . morris was an angel investor when the company first started and served as chairman until november 2014 . 8 originally headquartered in sweden king nearly went bankrupt before a christmas eve cash infusion in 2003 . 3 the company raised 43 million in 2005 by selling a large stake to apax and index ventures . 8 the company finished the year with a profit for the first time and has been profitable each year since . 3 rowland who had served as co ceo departed the company in 2008 and sold his stake back to the company for 3 million in 2011 . 7 angel investor and former board member klaus hommels sold his similar stake at the same time . 8 by the first quarter of 2012 king had 30 million unique users . users jumped to 408 million by the end of 2013 . 8 sales increased from a little over 62 million in 2011 to 1.88 billion in 2013 . 8 sales in 2014 were over 2.6 billion with candy crush generating nearly half of that amount . 9 in q4 2014 king had 356 million monthly unique users with 8.3 million of them spending money . while 97.7 % of people are playing king s games for free the 2.3 % that pay are spending an average of 23.42 a month within the games . 9 trademark and cloning disputes edit in january 2014 king attracted controversy after attempting to trademark the words candy and saga in game titles . 10 this directly impacted stoic s trademark request for the banner saga to which king filed an opposition calling the name deceptively similar to king games . 10 stoic said that the dispute hindered work on a planned sequel to their game . 11 the developer runsome apps opposed king s trademark of the term candy on grounds of likelihood of confusion referencing its candyswipe game that was published two years before candy crush saga . king subsequently contested the trademark of candyswipe . in february 2014 runsome apps ceased legal action and opposition towards king while posting an open letter shaming king s business practices regarding trademarks . 12 on 17 april 2014 it was reported that king has settled its disputes with stoic studio and runsome apps . 13 also in january 2014 game developer matthew cox accused king of ripping off his game scamperghost saying king s pac avoid was a clone of it . according to cox he was in talks with king about licensing scamperghost but when the deal fell through the company released the game pac avoid . cox said epicshadows the developer of pac avoid told him that king had approached them to clone the game very quickly . 14 king removed the game from its website but denied the cloning allegation stating that they were removing the game for the avoidance of doubt . 15 later in an official statement on the company s website king stated the details of the situation are complex but the bottom line is that we should never have published pac avoid . we have taken the game down from our site and we apologise for having published it in the first place . let me be clear this unfortunate situation is an exception to the rule . king does not clone games and we do not want anyone cloning our games . 16 ipo edit on 26 march 2014 king completed its initial public offering ipo . priced at 22.50 a share the middle of its projected price range the ipo valued the company at us 7.08 billion . about 500 million was raised through the sale of 22.2 million shares . of that 15.3 million shares came from the company and the rest from apax ventures and other stakeholders . it was the largest ever ipo for a mobile social gaming company in the us narrowly eclipsing zynga s 2011 offering . 3 to celebrate the debut candy crush mascots took to the new york stock exchange . 7 shares of king fell 15.6 % on the first day of trading closing at 19 . 7 the company trades under the king symbol on the new york stock exchange . 3 with approximately 35.6 million shares morris is the company s largest shareholder . 7 acquisition edit on 23 february 2016 activision blizzard acquired king for a deal of 5.9 billion . 6 key employees edit riccardo zaconni chief executive officer sebastian knutsson chief creative officer hope cochran chief financial officer rob miller chief legal officer and corporate secretary alex dale chief marketing officer stephane kurgan chief operating officer thomas hartwig chief technology officer mark taylor chief people officer games edit king games offer synchronized play enabling users to connect to their facebook account whilst playing on their smartphone or tablet device . this means that the user s progress is updated across all platforms allowing the player to switch from smartphone to tablet to facebook without losing their progress in the game . 17 18 they also offer two of their games to connect to kakaotalk in south korea . bubble witch saga was king s first mobile game released in july 2012 after its launch on facebook in september 2011 . 19 20 bubble witch saga and its sequel bubble witch 2 saga are versions of puzzle bobble . 21 papa pear saga was released in march 2013 on facebook it is a peggle variation . 22 pepper panic saga was released in january 2014 as a matching game on facebook . 23 it was ranked the 23rd most played game on facebook in january 2014 . 24 around 2012 pyramid solitaire saga was soft launched on facebook . it was released on mobile in may 2014 . 25 in late 2012 pet rescue saga was launched on facebook then on ios and android in june 2013 candy crush soda saga was soft launched on facebook and mobile 26 and bubble witch 2 saga was widely released for android and ios devices . 27 in november 2014 candy crush soda saga was widely released on android and ios . 28 alpha betty saga launched on facebook in april 2015 . this game is a variation of bookworm . in 2013 king acquired the defold game engine developed by ragnar svensson and christian murray in 2007 as a lightweight 2d game engine . the two had offered the engine to king as well as their services as contractors to support it and later bought the engine using it first for the game blossom blast saga . 29 in march 2016 king released the defold engine as a free development tool for any user . 30 candy crush saga edit main article candy crush saga king s most popular game is candy crush saga which was launched on king s website in march 2011 which is a match 3 game . 31 it launched on facebook in april 2012 and quickly gained popularity . following its success on facebook king launched candy crush saga on mobile ios and android in november 2012 . the game was downloaded over 10 million times in its first month . 32 33 in january 2013 it became the number one most played game on facebook . 2 34 it had over 45 million monthly users in march 2013 . by january 2014 it had over 150 million monthly users . 35 list of facebook games developed by king edit game release date description bubble witch saga 27 october 2011 similar to puzzle bobble players aim colored bubbles at a field clearing bubbles whenever they make three or more interconnecting matches . pyramid solitaire saga 14 january 2012 based on the solitaire card game pyramid players attempt to clear a board of cards by selecting cards that have are the next highest or lowest value of the card they just selected or dealt themselves . candy crush saga 12 april 2012 a match 3 swapping tile game but includes special candy tiles that can be created from matches and unique goals . pet rescue saga 11 october 2012 based on samegame where the player selects matching adjacent boxes of the same color to clear the game board freeing animals atop the boxes once they reach the bottom . papa pear saga 25 february 2013 a variation of peggle where the player shoots projectiles onto a game board to clear various pegs and land the projectiles into scoring containers at the bottom of the game board . farm heroes saga 7 march 2013 a match 3 swapping tile game to collect various crops to meet each puzzle s quota . pepper panic saga 30 october 2013 a match 3 swapping tile game to collect hot peppers where matches are based on both color and size and a successful match leaves behind a pepper of a larger size . diamond digger saga 13 march 2014 another variation of samegame but where matching groups of same colored tiles clears out dirt and rock to create a route for water to flow between the level s entrance and exit . bubble witch 2 saga 12 may 2014 a sequel to bubble witch saga following primarily the same gameplay mechanics but adding new level types . candy crush soda saga 20 october 2014 expanding on candy crush saga by adding additional candy tile types soda filling levels that causes candy tiles to float instead of sink and other puzzle objectives . alpha betty saga 13 april 2015 a tile matching game following the concept of boggle and bookworm where the player attempts to make words from adjacent letter tiles . scrubby dubby saga 11 july 2015 a tile matching game similar to chuzzle where instead of swapping titles the player slides a row or column to make matches . paradise bay 6 august 2015 a village simulation game in the nature of farmville developed by z2 a studio acquired by king . 36 blossom blast saga 5 november 2015 a variant of talismania flowers of various colours are placed on a hex grid and the player traces a line of similar coloured flowers to match them up and make