The co-founder of King, the startup behind the hit mobile game Candy Crush that was sold to Activision Blizzard in 2016 for $5.9 billion, has created a new stealth gaming startup.
After selling Candy Crush developer King for $5.9 billion to Activision, one of its co-founders, Sebastian Knutsson, is creating a new gaming startup.
© 2014 Bloomberg Finance LP
Filings in Ireland and Sweden show that Sebastian Knutsson, King’s co-founder and former chief creative officer, and Stephane Kurgan, King’s former chief operating officer, registered a new company called Queen Digital Entertainment (QDE) in 2023. LinkedIn updates show the duo hired at least 10 former King collaborators to work on the new game project. Former King vice president Anna Lernmark was hired in August 2023 to lead the new game studio’s Stockholm office.
The team is working on new casual gaming apps with preliminary plans focused on a “match 3”-style puzzle game, where players line up matching sets of icons to form a score line, sources close to QDE said. ForbesSimilar games like Candy Crush or Royal Match (developed by Turkish startup Dream Games) have dominated the charts of the most downloaded apps for more than a decade.
According to sources and official documents, Queen has raised about $5 million from Knutsson, Kurgan and another King co-founder, Thomas Hartwig, as well as Kurt Bjorklund, managing director of private equity giant Permira. Knutsson, Kurgan and QDE declined to comment.
The name of the new video game startup is a nod to former colleagues of King, who was an early advocate of so-called “freemium” casual gaming. His hit game Candy Crush Saga generated $20 billion in revenue since its launch in 2012 and has attracted more than 5 billion downloads, according to King. Dream Games’ Royal Match app has surpassed Candy Crush as the top-grossing app in July 2023 Just 18 months after the Istanbul-based startup raised $255 million at a $2.75 billion valuation in January 2022.
The Monopoly Go game from American studio Scopley has since surpassed both titles thanks to hundreds of millions of dollars in marketing. It comes as the gaming industry faces its biggest downturn in decades with researchers Newzoo estimating that the global gaming market grew just 0.5% to $183.9 billion in annual revenue last year.
“Match 3 games are a very saturated market where it’s going to be hard to stand out,” says Anna Kerr, a games analyst at Ampere Analysis. “You’re going to have to pay a lot to get into that market.”
Activision Blizzard bought King just over three years after Candy Crush launched and 18 months after the Swedish game developer listed on the New York Stock Exchange (Activision Blizzard was later acquired by Microsoft for $69 billion At the time, the deal was a historic milestone in the video game industry and one of the largest acquisitions of European technology companies.
Knutsson stepped down as King’s chief creative officer in March 2022 to focus on Sweet Capital, a venture capital fund he founded with King’s co-founders. Riccardo Zacconi and Thomas Hartwig. Kurgan left King in 2019 and has since been a partner at Index Ventures.
This article was originally published on forbes.com.
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