Developer King Digital Entertainment, creators of the insanely popular puzzle game Candy Crush, has experienced a worse than expected drop in stock prices, plunging 21%.
The company has been panned by investors, claiming that they rely too heavily on Candy Crush, the game that took over Facebook and mobile phones in 2012. They are beginning to worry that Kingmay just be aa one-hit wonder
King is one of the best-known advocates for the free-to-play business model, a marketing strategy in which game makers generate profits via purchases of virtual goods.
On Tuesday, the company said its second-quarter bookings fell $30 million, or 5%, from the first quarter to $611 million. The decline was primarily due to low sales of the recently released Candy Crush Saga, the company said.
“We have seen a stronger, unexpected decline in Candy Crush in the latter part of the quarter,” Chief Executive Riccardo Zacconi said in an interview. “We’re in a year of transition from Candy Crush…to a strategy of building a portfolio of games, and we see that the strategy is working overall.”
King also announced that it purchased Singapore-based Nonstop Games, paying $16 million upfront. King Digital Entertainment hopes that the studio will help them create a broader portfolio of games in genres as of yet untapped by King.
Does King Digital Entertainment have any chance of rebounding? Or are you a hardcore gamers cheering for the end of the candy empire? Let us know in the comments.
