Candy Crush Saga maker considers going public. Good idea?
King.com, the software developer behind the hit game Candy Crush Saga, is preparing for an initial public offering, to a new article in Bloomberg BusinessWeek.聽
Bloomberg reports that King, a multinational company with offices in Europe and the US, is working with聽JPMorgan Chase & Co., Credit Suisse Group, and Bank of America on the IPO, the timing and size of which has not yet been decided.
The banks declined to comment to Bloomberg, but in a statement to the Wall Street Journal, a spokesman for King acknowledged that the company was mulling the possibility.
"King鈥檚 success and growth presents numerous opportunities for the business to develop further, and one option would be to take the company public," the spokesman . "However, while it鈥檚 an option for the future, we would not comment on when we could consider making such a decision."
Candy Crush Saga works a lot like the popular tile-matching game Bejeweled. Players slot candies 鈥� including jelly beans, lozenges, and lemon drops 鈥� into rows, and rack up points accordingly. As of last month, Candy Crush Saga was the most popular online game in the world, with approximately 15 million users playing at least once a day.聽
Still, the risks for King 鈥� also known as聽Midasplayer.com Ltd. 鈥� and investors are sizable. Zynga, the online gaming giant that went public in 2011, with an amazing amount of fanfare and amid a lot of high expectations, recently laid off 520 people, or 18 percent of its workforce.聽
"None of us ever expected to face a day like today, especially when so much of our culture has been about growth," Zynga CEO Mark Pincus in a message to employees at the time. "But I think we all know this is necessary to move forward."聽
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