The folks behind Candy Crush Saga think their company is big enough to go public
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Heard of game development studio King? No, right? You're forgiven, as most folks don't know the name of the studio behind one of the world's most popular games right now: Candy Crush Saga. Sure, it might just be Bejeweled with free-to-play mechanisms built in, but over 93 million people played it last month. Yes, really.
And with those kinds of numbers, King apparently believes it's large enough to go public -- the company today filed for its initial public offering (IPO) with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. Unexciting financial jargon aside, this means that King's hoping to raise a ton of cash (it's unclear how much) by offering stock to prospective investors; The New York Times is saying King "is expected to seek a multibillion-dollar valuation".
If all of this sounds awfully familiar, that's because FarmVille-maker Zynga pulled the same move just over two years ago -- the story hasn't been as positive in the following years. Like Zynga, King is largely dependent on a single game for its enormous userbase (the 93 million who played Candy Crush Saga in December are pulled from an overall pool of 128 milllion -- over 70 percent of King's entire consumer base). Of course, only time will tell if King will ascend from one-hit wonder, like the Zynga example, to mega-franchise purveyor, a la Rovio with Angry Birds.