Everybody wants to know how others make their money and how much they make. The question is even more interesting when it comes to free products. Candy Crush is a product that millions billions of people use daily without paying anything. So, how much money has Candy Crush made, and how they do it?
Candy Crush: All You Need to Know
What is Candy Crush?
Candy Crush is a popular puzzle game. The screen of Candy Crush is a grid full of candies of various colors. The game’s main challenge is to match three elements of the same color and shape to make them disappear and gain points. This type of game is called simply ”match-three” or “tile-matching” format.
Who Made Candy Crush?
The game was developed by the game studio King. King Digital Entertainment is a Swedish company best known for developing and publishing social and casual games. In addition to the famous Candy Crush, they are the authors of Bubble Witch Saga, Farmville, and Pet Rescue Saga.
In 2016, King was acquired by Activision Blizzard for US$5.9 billion, and in 2023, Activision was acquired by Microsoft, making King and Candy Crush part of the Microsoft empire.
When Did Candy Crush Come Out?
The game was initially launched on Facebook in April 2012 as a browser-based game. It gained popularity instantly, having over 4 million players in just a few weeks. Motivated by the success of the browser version, King released a mobile version of the game later in 2012. In 2015, the game became available on Windows OS.
How Much Does Candy Crush Make a Day
Based on data from company quarterly reports, Candy Crush is estimated to generate almost 3 million dollars in revenue daily, which has grown more than twice since 2016.
Popularity and User Engagement
For years, the game has maintained extreme popularity. Candy Crush has a steady number of monthly active players. In 2024, 12 years after its release, over 200 million people play it every month. The number of players has decreased slightly, but it didn’t affect revenue.
The data showed that in the first seven years, people spent 73 billion hours (8.3 million years) playing Candy Crush. Some people claim that the game became a real addiction.
Some years ago, Alex Dale, a senior executive at King, said that one player spent on Candy Crush $2,600 in one day. Dale noted that “the player was thinking rationally and taking advantage of a sale in the game’s store.”
Why is Candy Crush So Popular?
There is nothing revolutionary about Candy Crush, and there wasn’t anything when it first launched in 2012. A decade earlier, another match-three game, Bejeweled, was a top-downloads hit. These games help people distract and are a perfect pastime during the commute. Yet only one in thousands has become so popular.
Claiming to know the secret of Candy Crush’s popularity would be speculation, but there are some facts that definitely contribute to its success. The King team never stopped developing the game, adding new levels, and perfecting the sales funnel. Although from the outside, the game doesn’t seem to have changed in years, there is a big team working on it continuously.
The Candy Crush team doesn’t just sketch new levels. They analyze large datasets of their users to learn players’ behavioral patterns and later use this information to design a more engaging and addictive game that people want to play again and again and spend more time and money on.
Along with data analysis, they use AI to help them design new levels and test them, modeling different user behaviors. With all these technologies hidden behind tiles of candies, the game captures the attention of so many people. “It’s great to start your day by winning at something,” said Paula Ingvar, head of Soda Saga.
How Many Downloads Does Candy Crush Have?
In 2023, King announced that Candy Crush Saga had over 5 billion downloads. This number becomes even bigger if you add other games of the franchise, like the Jelly and Soda sagas. In 2024, the number of quarterly downloads plunged compared to the beginning of 2023, but it’s not the first time it happened to Candy Crush. In 2016 there was already some decline in the number of downloads, but later, the numbers went higher again.
The Business Model Behind Candy Crush
The business model that Candy Crush and similar games use is freemium. The game is free, yet players can access more gaming experience if they are willing to pay a little extra. Let’s take a closer look at this game economy design.
How Does Candy Crush Make Money?
Candy Crush makes money through in-app purchases. Users can buy extra lives and other bonus items to help them complete the levels. The in-game currency is called Gold Bars. 50 Gold Bars are sold for $1.99, while 500 are worth $14.99.
In the beginning, Candy Crush also used to have ads, but in 2013, they decided to remove the apps as they brought in a small part of the revenue but annoyed users.
Inside Candy Crush’s Monetization Strategies
Free games earn the bulk of their income from a small percentage of players. In the case of Candy Crush, over 96% of users never buy anything. Among the percentage of those who do purchase bonus items, the vast majority would spend very little. A tiny percentage of paying users, called “whales,” brings them a disproportionately large share of the revenue. Some people spend hundreds or thousands of dollars monthly due to the game’s addictive nature.
When looking at the data that compares the most popular games in the US by the number of gamers who made in-app purchases in them, you can see that Candy Crush Saga is leading the list with 11%, and Candy Crush Soda Saga occupies 4th place with 7%, thus making the franchise absolute leader of the list. It wins over other popular mobile games like Call of Duty: Mobile and Pokémon Go.
This graph demonstrates that Candy Crush manages to attract an enormous number of players and does an excellent job of stimulating people to buy Gold Bars. Let’s take a deeper look into Candy Crush’s secrets and find out how it achieves such a high level of conversion.
The Role of In-App Purchases (IAPs)
When looking at Candy Crush’s revenues, one can see how efficient IAPs are. Even if all 5 billion users paid the standard price for the download, they wouldn’t have made as much money as they do by selling Gold Bars. The price would have to be $4 to reach the same revenue, but then there would be much fewer players.
The Cost of Developing a Game Like Candy Crush
Developing a casual puzzle game is much easier than a complex modern triple-A RPG with movie-like 3D graphics. With simple visuals and game mechanics, the price is quite accessible. However, it’s not a straight way to the billions fortune.
It is obvious that Candy Crush takes a lot to maintain. Scalable servers that can handle millions of players add to the cost, as do continuously added levels, marketing, and overhead. For the sake of simplifying the task, let’s imagine we want to launch a game that’s similar to Candy Crush without the ambition to jump to the same level of customer base instantly.
Core development would cost somewhere from $30,000 to $70,000, while graphics, animation, and sound design could range from $12,000 to $30,000. Add level design and testing, and the price would start at $50,000, increasing to $100,000, $150,000, and more if you need more sophisticated visuals, gameplay, smart monetization, etc.
Want to Develop a Game Like Candy Crush?
The revenue of Candy Crush is close to that of a major candy company like Haribo, although the sweets they make are not real. Given the massive success and impressive revenues, it’s no surprise that many people are tempted to create a casual game with a similar monetization system. Now that you know all the insider info on their monetization strategies, it’s time to dare and try making it with your idea.
To develop a game like Candy Crush, you need a team of game designers, developers, artists, animators, sound designers, QA testers, and a project manager. The team could consist of 7-15 people, depending on the game’s complexity and timing.
If you don’t have prior experience with such products, find a game development studio with a portfolio of quality casual games. If you don’t have a clear idea yet, here is an expert tip.
How to succeed in the market of match-3 games? Kevuru expertise
In our portfolio, there are simple match-three games like Candy Crush along with more sophisticated projects. An example of a simple casual game is Juicy Fruits, like a healthy diet version of Candy Crush. Kevuru Games made a full-cycle game development ob this mobile game. It runs on Unity and is available for Android and iOS.
Since the niche of match-3 games is quite busy, gaining success with a new product as simple as Candy Crush is hard. To stand out from the competition and capture the attention of players, you can add an original storyline. For that, you need well-developed characters and animation. Quality 2D art can be your competitive advantage.
At Kevuru Games, we have experience with such projects. Some of the games we’ve been working on have match-3 elements, as well as an engaging narrative and interesting characters. For example, the game Shade is an interactive novel with match-3 elements. Here is a scene created for the game by our artists.
Mystery Match Village is a game that combines match-3 elements with hidden objects and a storyline based on Agatha Christie’s novel. Our artists created mesmerizing 2D environments for this game.
Are you ready to jump into work on your project? Contact us and let’s get on this journey together.
