King's stock loses over 20% on Candy Crush Saga weakness, earned paltry $611 million
- Thread starter Nibel
- Start date
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
only $611 million in the quarter
Bedameister
Member
Good
Jay Shadow
Member
Who would have thought that stock based on a single mobile/facebook game that suddenly blew up would be a bad investment?
FallingEdge
Member
Joe Shlabotnik
Banned
Thank god I put my life savings into Glu Mobile instead
I'm not seeing how its blew up?
Its sales up are more than 20% YOY just not by as much as analyst's forecast.
a lot of people don't like King because
1) litigiousness and trying to trademark common words like "candy" and "saga"
2) their games encourage players to pester facebook friends
They have a history of shady business practices:
-Candy Crush makers sue The Banner Saga, trademark the word ‘candy’
-Candy Crush Saga makers to sue game they copied
Because they are evil thieving crushers of dreams?
1st Course
Member
Results are an improvement vs last year but growth is slowing.
Because they tried to get monopoly on the word "Saga" which caused lots of trouble for Stoic Studio, the devs of The Banner Saga,
They also copied a similiar game called Candy Swipe which released long time before Candy Crush and they even sued the dev.
Canis lupus
Member
The beginning of the end.
The casual market is an anomaly. Other than simplicity (being the main component for mass appeal), it's difficult to know exactly what people will latch on to. King has fallen for that fast money, over-estimated the value of their product, and eventually good people will lose their jobs due to down sizing because these guys are one trick ponies.
Zeuanimals
Member
This is why actual gaming companies (or anyone really) are gonna have a hard time with mobile. The market is just way too fickle, and somehow a hell of a lot more than the actual gaming market which is already pretty fickle. They're also gonna have a pretty hard time finding that special time waster that becomes the craze in social media since there's absolutely no way of knowing what's gonna be big and what's not.
You could make an actual good mobile game, market it well, but it could end up being completely overshadowed by a Flappy Bird or Candy Crush.
Edit: FucKing yes! This company needs to go down, maybe. I feel conflicted, on one hand, there's probably good people there just doing their jobs. On the other hand, they probably don't have a lot of people working there since nothing comes out from the company and they suck.
1st Course
Member
485m monthly active users
10m paying users
10m paying users
Uncle Rupee
Banned
Holy fucking christ
You could practically make two Avatar-scale movies with that kind of money
And number two pisses me off way more then number one.
metalslimer
Member
While I do believe that mobile has a big future, overvaluation of these companies has got to stop when their success hinges on one game like this.Even still, they made a ridiculous amount of money that many actual huge gaming companies would love in a quarter.
bobawesome
Member
...and the crowning jewel:
"I hate mobile games that don't appeal to me so I hope these people and their company fall to financial ruin."
How about know about the history of a company first then make a comment ? Google is free you know.
Lashley
Why does he wear the mask!?
I don't hate mobile games. I do hate King though and the stupid shit they try and pull.
Plus aren't they primarily facebook games? Dunno why you're so worked up over it.
deltatheta
Member
It's a possibility. A major issue with the mobile gaming business is that even if you have a successful game, it's really difficult to get people to try out your other games. For some reason, people who like mobile games don't tend to seek out other games from the same developer. It seems like the primary method of discovery is the top charts.
Zeuanimals
Member
They're scum. It's pretty well-documented-ish.
There is no rhyme, reason, or pattern to mobile game success. Some game will inexplicably catch fire and make a ton of money, even if it's a clone of a game that was originally released years ago on the same platform. That's why investing in publicly traded mobile game companies is a losing endeavor. They will inevitably claim in their 5-year plan that they've cracked the code for continuous mobile success and present Disco Dan-esque earnings graphs, but they really don't know any more than anyone else does.
I won't lie; I'm pretty critical towards mobile/phone/Facebook games, probably to a petty degree. But news about their shady business practices (trademarking the word 'candy', seriously?) doesn't make me at all sad for them.
SSPssp
Member
Their income though (bottom-line) was 165.4 million (GAAP). Nothing to sneeze at, but not insane.
test_account
XP-39C²
I thought it ment that their earnings had went down a lot, then i see how much they made. Amazing how much money they are making.
Tertullian
Member
Every massive mobile gaming one-hit wonder that fails like this will drive home the message that it is stupid to invest your whole fate in a predatory, anti-consumer business model reliant on milking whales for all they're worth. Zynga, King. There are no successful or smart free-to-play, microtransactions-based gaming companies. There are only lucky ones.
Flappy Bird totally makes me believe this. It's not like it was the first game to do what it does, nor did the creator go out of his way to market it. It just blew the hell up.
7DollarHagane
Banned
It really is a shame that they are profitable at all. It is good news that its a flash in the pan and probably on the decline finally. I don't really see anyone playing it anymore like I used to months ago.
This company and what it stands for can burn to the ground.
This company and what it stands for can burn to the ground.
zenosparadox
Member
Though their opinions are not explained, it does not make you a superior individual to trivialize those that have an opinion that differs from your own. I believe it is well within an individual's rights to criticize a company that he or she deems to be bad for the gaming industry. In fact, it is my personal opinion that King represents the kind of lowest common denominator that lowers standards and brings in investors (read: suits, talking heads) who could care less about innovation, deep experiences and the overall health of the gaming industry.
The Top F2P Monetization Tricks
Half of all F2P mobile game revenue comes from 0.22% of players - report
Also, King was recently acting like an idiot trying to trademark the word "candy".
CandySwipe Creator's Letter to Candy Crush's Developers
LumpOfCole
Member
Mobile gaming isn't dead, it's just going through its own version of what happened to Atari in the early 1980s. Overwhelming amounts of piss poor quality games getting overhyped and running rampant on the market.