A Sweet Deal? Activision Acquires Candy Crush Creator King For $5.9 Billion

If you’ve ever fed money to the time sink that is Candy Crush, prepare to kick yourself: had you hauled just $5.9 billion more out of your wallet, you could have purchased the entire franchise and its parent company. Oh well – sometimes hindsight is 20/20.

The notable purchase of King was made by Activision, and at $18 per share, the company is paying a 20% premium over October 30’s closing price, and 27% premium over the three-month volume weighted price. Activision plans to let King be run as an independent company, which seems like the most reasonable thing to do. It will continue to be led by company founder Riccardo Zacconi.

With this purchase, Activision immediately gains an immense presence in the mobile market, one that it has up to this point not had much success in. While King has been around for over a decade, major success was elusive until it began publishing games on Facebook in 2011. Its first game there was Bubble Witch Saga, and in April 2012, Candy Crush Saga was born. The rest, as they say, is history.

Every game the company has published on Facebook has “Saga” in its name, and that’s led to some interesting incidents, including an attempt at getting indie title The Banner Saga to change its name.

Both Activision CEO Bobby Kotick and King CEO Riccardo Zacconi have high hopes for the future. Zacconi has said: “We will combine our expertise in mobile and free-to-play with Activision Blizzard’s world-class brands and proven track record of building and sustaining the most successful franchises, to bring the best games in the world to millions of players worldwide.”

Activision owns some of the most popular franchises in the world, such as Call of Duty and World of Warcraft, so by bringing Candy Crush‘s maker under its wing, it really has become a force to be reckoned with.