Candy Crush Saga mobile mastermind Tommy Palm leaves King for a new startup (exclusive)

Posted byby Dean Takahashi
January 20, 2015
Updated June 18, 2025
3 min

Tommy Palm loves the startup life. So the man credited with helping to create the most popular mobile game on the planet, Candy Crush Saga, has decided to leave King Digital Entertainment for a new startup.

That’s a big deal for King, which was able to go public at a $6 billion valuation on the strength of Candy Crush Saga. This match-3 puzzler generated an estimated $250 million in the Sept. 30 quarter. Candy Crush Saga is still the No. 3 game in the world on the top-grossing charts, behind only Clash of Clans and Game of War: Fire Age. And it is a big reason why King has more than 495 million monthly active players. Candy Crush Saga is one of the few games in the world that has reached nearly everyone with a mobile device, and Palm was King’s public face for the game.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.