Candy Crush Saga publisher King keeps losing players — but this didn’t deter Activision

King had a mixed third quarter, but it continues to bleed players as its older hits lose their luster.

All three of King’s self-identified “key performance indicators” (KPI) are officially trending downward even as Activision gets ready to sign a $5.9 billion check to acquire the mobile giant. The Candy Crush company’s daily average players (DAU) were down 3 percent year-over-year to 133 million last quarter. Monthly active players (MAU) dropped back below 500 million to 474 million, which represents a 4 percent year-over-year dip. And monthly unique players (MUU) are now 330 million, which is down 5 percent from the same period in 2014. All of these metrics are also down for the second quarter in a row and are at a 12-month low. What this really means is that fewer people are opening up their browsers to play Candy Crush and other King games on Facebook even as the company continues to find more mobile players.