Candy Crush Saga

Medical alert: Your thumb has not yet evolved to the point where it can make the same repetitive tapping gesture over and over and over again for several hours at a time. PIX11 brings us word that medical journal JAMA recently published a case study about a man who had to undergo surgery on his thumb because he’d spent too much time playing King’s hyper-addictive game Candy Crush Saga.

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This is what the creator of Flappy Bird was potentially giving up when he took his game down from the App Store and Google Play. Candy Crush Saga publisher King filed IPO registration paperwork on Tuesday and revealed that it generated a whopping $1.88 billion in revenue in 2013 along with $1.98 billion in gross bookings, which the company defines as the “total amount paid by our users for virtual items and for access to skill tournaments.” While this in and of itself is impressive, here’s the truly crazy part: King says that 78% of its gross bookings came from Candy Crush Saga alone, which means that Candy Crush made around $1.54 billion in gross bookings last year. Of course, Candy Crush’s ridiculous strength could also be King’s greatest weakness: It has no other games that even come close to matching the user base of its flagship title and if user interest starts to die off, King could find itself in Zynga territory very quickly.

The mobile game developer community hasn’t taken too kindly to King trademarking the words “candy” and “saga,” and it’s decided to respond the best way it knows how: By trolling. Several indie developers over the past week have been participating in Candy Jam, a development event that runs through February 3rd and that aims to flood app stores with games that contain the words “candy” and “saga” in their titles. Among our favorites released so far are Candy Escape Goat Saga (Warning: do not click link unless you’re prepared to be bombarded by awful music), Candy Puppet Saga and The Saga of Crushing Candy. You can follow all of the zany candy crushing antics of the Candy Jam developers by checking out the #candyjam hashtag on Twitter.

Many of us know Candy Crush Saga as the annoyingly ubiquitous mobile game that’s made a ton of money for British software developer King. However, it looks like Candy Crush Saga is gearing up for a second career as an intellectual property troll. GameZebo reports that King has successfully trademarked the word “candy” as it relates to both games and clothing and is issuing takedown notices to mobile apps that use “candy” in their titles. More →