Turkish gaming company dethrones legendary game Candy Crush
Royal Match, a game developed by Istanbul-based Dream Games, has taken the title from Candy Crush, which has been the market leader for over 10 years.
12punto
According to data from the research firm Data.ai, which tracks spending on Apple and Google app stores, Dream Games' Royal Match, which was the highest-grossing game in July, still maintains this position.
According to a report by the Financial Times, Royal Match, developed by a small team at Dream Games in Istanbul, was introduced to digital gaming enthusiasts in 2021. Within a two-year period, Royal Match managed to replace Candy Crush. Candy Crush, developed by Activision Blizzard, is known as the most successful production in gaming history. Released in late 2012, Candy Crush has failed to enter the top 10 list of "highest-grossing games" for only 6 months since then. The game held the top spot on the list for exactly 127 months. It is estimated that Candy Crush has generated over $20 billion in revenue to date. Microsoft had acquired the game's creator, Activision Blizzard, for $75 billion.
55 million active users
The figures provided by Soner Aydemir, one of the founders of Dream Games and the company's current CEO, regarding Royal Match, which has taken the lead, are striking. The game's annual gross sales revenue has reached $2 billion (a figure before sales commissions paid to app stores). For Royal Match, a puzzle game, 90 percent of users continue to play new levels of the game the following year. According to Data.ai data, Royal Match, which has 55 million active users, has been generating more revenue since July 2023 than Candy Crush, which has 160 million users. Dream Games plans to maintain its leadership with Royal Kingdom, the sequel to Royal Match.
The team, which founded Dream Games in 2019 after selling Peak Games, which they had previously established, to global gaming giant Zynga, added Ed Catmull, one of the founders of the famous digital animation company Pixar, to their staff as a strategic advisor. It is stated that Catmull, who said, "When I started playing Royal Match, I loved the image quality of the game," has passed 5,000 levels in the game.
There is a 35-seat cinema in the headquarters of Dream Games, where 200 people work. CEO Soner Aydemir says, "The whole team watches movies regularly, and then we discuss for hours what they did well and what they did poorly. We also play games that couldn't survive in the market and try to understand why they weren't good."