back to article King's stocks are candy-crushed as its top toy suffers splurge slump

More than 13 per cent of Candy Crush game-maker King Digital's stock price was wiped off overnight – after it admitted players of its wildly popular mobile app were spending less and less money. King’s results for Q1 2014, the quarter in which it launched its rather poor market debut, revealed a couple of wobbles: net profit …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    A one trick pony

    For those daft enough to buy shares into this (cough) wonderfully nice company, more fool you.

    1. graham_

      Re: A one trick pony

      Exactly! The IPO got me playing the game again, feels great upping the stats for daily playing non paying users

  2. Chizo Ejindu
    Coat

    Is anyone surprised?

    One hit wonder wondering where next wonder will hit! More at 11!

    /coat

  3. NellyD

    One word

    Good

    /bunch of t0ssers

  4. Pookietoo

    I wonder how much influence publicity, about their attempts to bully other game developers, has had.

    1. John P

      Probably not a great deal for Joe Public but probably resulted in some games developers leaving, although they probably account for a relatively small portion of Candy Crush's user base anyway.

      King's fortunes will continue to slide as long as they are a one trick pony. All of their games are just cheap re-skins of Candy Crush, that cow isn't going to be milkable for ever...

      1. Tom 35

        re-skin

        Candy Crush is a re-skin of Bejeweled (or any one of 100 match 3 games) with a better then avarage Player Milking System (stuck, buy a powerup" + some almost impossible levels).

        1. Jedit Silver badge

          "Player Milking System"

          It's less accurate to say "Stuck? Buy a power-up, plus some levels are almost impossible" than it is to say "Some levels are almost impossible unless and until you use a power-up". I've been stuck on some levels for days, then used a power-up I got from the Wheel and mysteriously it becomes much easier on following attempts. Dreamworld levels are especially bad for this; you get nailed again and again by huge numbers of candies from one side of the balance dropping and none from the other, then you use a power-up and suddenly you stop having three straight yellows drop to tip the owl off and you start getting neutral colours instead.

          1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge
            Happy

            Re: "Player Milking System"

            you get nailed again and again by huge numbers of candies from one side of the balance

            So there's an imbalance in the force,

            suddenly you stop having three straight yellows drop to tip the owl off

            This is obviously some sort of bizarre sexual perversion. I mean I've heard of dogging, but tipping owls?

            and you start getting neutral colours instead.

            And after the rumpy-pumpy comes inevitable decorating...

            It's possible there's more to this game than I previously thought...

          2. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: "Player Milking System"

            First time I played it the game it was incredibly easy. I beat my friend's high score on most levels (and she'd been playing for quite a while). I remember thinking "she's not very good at this". When I got stuck, I went back to beginning and the levels were much more difficult the second time around.

            I guess if you're trying to hook people into your pointless game, you want them to think they're really good at it.

  5. Sir Barry

    Coming soon

    Stock Bubble Burst Saga...

    1. Fatman

      RE: Coming soon Stock Bubble Burst Saga...

      I can see it now, when you are playing, all of a sudden this bubble appears, bursts, and the words:

      You Lose Sucker appear on the screen.

      Immediately hit the in-app purchase button for a reload to try again.

      I hate to tell you, but it is a suckers' bet.

      1. theblackhand

        Re: RE: Coming soon Stock Bubble Burst Saga...

        If I spend some money on more shares will that allow me to keep winning?

        I just need one more share....

  6. Kurt S

    New IP?

    I wonder what the creators of such amazing concepts as 'shooting bubbles against same colored bubbles' and 'swapping things around to create lines of same' have in store for us now?

    Maybe they'll do something like 'oddly shaped bricks falling down that you have to align' and the bricks can be made of soda cans! Surely a revolutionary concept.

    Oh and if things are looking bad maybe they can add the option to buy the specific brick you need!

    1. Tom 35

      Re: New IP?

      Maybe bouncing a ball against a wall of bricks. They can trade mark the word brick too.

      1. Babbit55

        Re: New IP?

        Hey they might branch out and try aligning blocks to make words!

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: New IP?

        >They can trade mark the word brick too.

        Sorry Apple already have the patent/trademark/judge in pocket for anything that even remotely looks like an iThingy and we all know just how much bricks could be mistaken for iThingies...

        1. Tom 13

          Re: Sorry Apple already

          I thought that was the single instance in which Apple and M$ formed a joint venture and trademarked the term.

      3. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge
        Devil

        Re: New IP?

        I've got an original game idea that will save them! You have a road, with lots of cars and lorries whizzing by on it. And you have to get a frog *ahem!* I mean toad across the road to safety. It could be called toady-roady-crush...

  7. RyokuMas
    Happy

    Elvis has left the building...

    Goodbye, King.com. Don't let the door hit your arse on the way out.

    Signed,

    Every single indie gamedev out there

  8. Alan Bourke

    Oh dear

    they'll have to steal some more ideas quick.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Did exactly like Facebook and so many others... Came in too late!

    You start, you get momentum, you thrive, and then when at the top, you go IPO... What do you think happens then? Well, you're out a year too late!

    Facebook did the same error. Or should I say, the investors who jumped on the IPO did that same error...

    The internet and the mobile world is moving fast. Anyone here still have that 3~4 year old "smart" Windows CE phone in their pocket? Well, 3~4 years in an eternity. Once you get all the whole world in your boat (basically what Facebook, Candy-Crush and many others managed to do), who else do you go to after? Who else do you "recruit", to "jump in"? People who still haven't jumped in are likely to not "buy it" anyway. So where do you go from there? How do you get even more revenue? I seriously doubt that those late-coming IPO can fare any better that where they are at now (it's already at the top). So from there, it's either flat, or more probably down, waiting for the next bit Internet phenomenon to replace it, and join the list of "has been".

    Just my humble opinion...

    1. Vector

      Re: Did exactly like Facebook and so many others... Came in too late!

      No, their error (and I mean both King and Facebook) is in assuming that they have any kind of lasting business model. They are both fads that we'll all have forgotten in 10 years.

  10. Anonymous Coward 101

    They cashed out at the right time. Investors of this stock have no right to whine.

  11. Salts

    Just wonder...

    How the app stores making it more difficult for kids to use their parents credit card for in app purchases has affected sales?

    Whatever the reason, I agree they are a, one hit, copy cat, bunch of tossers.

  12. Spearchucker Jones

    SV keeps saying there is no bubble.

    Fair enough. I do however, wonder where IT valuations will go once enough companies list one year and fail the next...

  13. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Devil

    "The decline of Candy Crush Saga will be more than offset by our new IP"

    It's hard to admit that one is only being used as a conduit to hoover up loose cash coming from suckers and badly managed pension schemes, all driven by the relentlessly burning heat of our socialistic money printing policies.

    TOOL!

    Janet Yellen’s Bathtub Economics: Excuse Me Doctor—There’s Bubbles In That Tub!

    As is well-known, one of Tobin’s first students to be conferred a PhD after he repaired from his Washington follies to Yale was Janet Yellen. That was 1971. If Keynesian economics in a national bathtub that was not at all a closed system was nonsense even then, it surely is nothing less than a laughingstock in the blooming, buzzing, churning global economy of today—-a place where the source of the marginal supply of labor and capital cannot even be pronounced in Washington, let alone be measured, calibrated and factored into a policy equation.

    Yet here is Janet Yellen at a Congressional hearing yesterday faithfully lip-synching professor Tobin. She has not even learned any new jargon in 43 years!

    “In light of the considerable degree of slack that remains in labor markets and the continuation of inflation below the (Fed’s) 2 percent objective, a high degree of monetary accommodation remains warranted,” Ms. Yellen said.

    This was all by way of justifying the lunatic proposition on which the Fed is now operating: Namely, that for the 68th consecutive month it kept the money market rate at zero—a condition that has never previously occurred in all of human history. Well, outside of post-bubble Japan anyway, and its evident how well that’s working.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Devil

    Maybe they (mmf) could sell (pffff)

    Some of their (fnrt) 'original I.P.' to (snrt) an interested third party? (Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha - sorry, can't keep it in somtimes).

  15. akeane

    Boring, are these...

    ...clearly derivative so-called "games"

    That's why akeane software industries Ltd. Have created the first original game design concept since 1869.

    We call our latest beta "Floppy Bard", in which you guide an old-time playwright through a maze of evil parchments looking for his "magic" Quill.

    When you help him discover his Quill he stops being "floppy" !!!

    We plan to release the beta after we have trademarked the word "floppy", and patented the excessive use of quotation marks...

  16. P. Lee

    I have a plan!

    Buy some popcorn and a card game.

    Invite some friends / neighbours over.

    Have some fun.

    Hold on a sec, I just have to nip down to the USPTO...

    Here's a clue - games are not really expected to be fun on their own, they are just an excuse to interact with people.

    Everything about "social" or mobile IT appears to be trying to drive people away from each other. Don't spend time with your friends and family, your phone has flashing lights like a slot-machine, it tells you when you are a winner and when you are a loser. You like the affirmation don't you, and you really don't want to stop when you've just been branded a loser, would you?

    Free-to-play is an abomination which skews corporates to even more evil. I wouldn't play Monopoly where players could pay to weight the dice or could buy "Advance to Go" or "I win" cards. It's fine to buy games, but buy the game, not the outcome. These are slot-machines without even an offer of a jackpot. Winning and losing become merely a crutch for the insecure if the playing-field isn't level. Micro-payments are there to ensure that no player has an excess of fun they haven't paid for. It's price-adjustment on an individual level.

    I've long assumed that anything on the TV isn't real or objective. Perhaps we can blame Snowden, or privacy-invading apps but now I trust very little with an internet connection. Things are just not what they seem and I just get a bit tired of dealing with the constant barrage of lies. Loyalty card sir? No thanks. Could you tell me why you need my address, mobile number, mother's maiden name and first-born son in order for me to evaluate your software? Try our real-time, cloud-based download threat prevention system! How is that different from the A/V I already have?

    IT has become a circus sideshow event with mystics, snake-oil salesmen and games you'll always lose. Meh! Friday. Time to look for a new job!

  17. Barbarian At the Gates
    Joke

    I'm sure you had many valid points...

    But seriously, attention spans are measured in milliseconds these days. BRING ON CRASH SWEETS JOURNEY!!!

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