Activision Blizzard and King will have a big grip on U.S. gamers.
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Activision’s $5.9B King deal will rewrite the gaming landscape

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 5 min

Activision Blizzard’s $5.9 billion purchase of Candy Crush Saga maker King Digital Entertainment will alter the gaming industry in the years ahead.

The giant company’s acquisition of King is the biggest merger in gaming since the combination of Activision and Blizzard in a nearly $19 billion deal in 2007, and it cements the new publisher as one of the biggest players in every gaming platform — home consoles like the PlayStation 4, PC online games like World of Warcraft, and mobile.

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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.