Tag: mobile game apps

Reports have stated that the purchase of the app developer has now been made for $5.9 billion.

The tremendously popular mobile games developer behind Candy Crush Saga, King Digital, has now been acquired for a reported $5.9 billion by another developer, Activision Blizzard.

Activision Blizzard is the developer of popular video games such as Destiny and Call of Duty.

By way of this purchase, Activision Blizzard will be obtaining all the outstanding shares of King Digital for $18.00 per share, in cash. This is a premium of 20 percent over the closing price of King on October 30, the day the deal actually went through. Once this deal officially closes, it will mean that two of the top 5 top grossing mobile games in the United States (Candy Crush Saga and Candy Crush Soda Saga) will be brought together with the leading console video game franchise (Call of Duty), as well as the largest franchise in PC games (World of Warcraft).

This mobile games developer acquisition has the potential to be a highly powerful one, heading forward.

On the first trading day after the acquisition, the shares of King Digital spiked by 15 percent in pre-trading, while the shares of Activision slumped slightly by 2.6 percent. In terms of the revenues of the companies, during the 12 months that ended with the close of September, King had brought in $2.1 billion while Activision Blizzard took in $4.7 billion.

According to the CEO of Activision Blizzard, Robert Kotick, when discussing King, “They built an incredible business.” He explained that “When we think about people who create compelling content and satisfy large audiences, they’ve been brilliant at it. We thought it would make a great opportunity for us to enter a new market.”

The team of CEO of King, Riccardo Zacconi, COO Stephane Kurgan and CCO Sebastian Knuttsson will be continuing their operations of King as an independent unit of operations. Zacconi said that they will be pooling their expertise in free to play mobile games with the world-class brands at Activision Blizzard, a company that already has a solid history of building and sustaining some of the top video gaming franchises.

A number of different apps have been removed, including titles from Marvel and Star Wars.

Disney Interactive recently announced that it would be retiring a range of its mobile games for Android, iOS and Windows Phone based devices, meaning that while they haven’t been taken down by the app stores online, they also won’t be updated or supported at any point in the near future.

This step has been taken as Disney Interactive has chosen to focus its resources on new and upcoming mobile apps.

The mobile games won’t actually be taken down from the online stores, so they are available for people who still have them, the support will no longer be there and the updates won’t keep coming. Two of the mobile apps that have been considered to be the most controversial among those that were taken down are “Star Wars: Tiny Death Star” and “Star Wars: Assault Team”. Though “Assault Team” had been developed by a Disney mobile studio, “Tiny Death Star” was created by NimbleBit, an indie developer.

Recent reports have stated that NimbleBit wasn’t informed of the retirement of the mobile games.

This was reported by GameSpot, which pointed out that the controversy surrounding the retirement of these mobile apps was started when a fan was the one to notify NimbleBit of the situation when they weren’t able to download the game from the Apple App Store.

Other games that have been removed include both “Monkey Island” and “Monkey Island 2”. Those were some fan favorite titles and their removal has been disappointing to many people who enjoyed them. They were often considered to be the adventure game apps that were the funniest ever put out by Lucas Arts.

Other mobile apps that have had their titles retired include “Guardians of the Galaxy: The Universal Weapon, Avengers Alliance, Avengers Initiative, and Wreck-It Ralph, but there were also many more.

For device users who purchased these mobile games using real money, no refunds were being offered at the time this article was written. Moreover, special offers and in-game items will also not be provided to the players of these apps.