King doesn’t just want players to keep coming back to Candy Crush — it wants to know why they keep coming back.
Candy Crush has persisted for well over a decade, with the match-three game’s Stockholm-based developer King developing some of the industry’s most robust expertise in the live service model during the game’s lifespan. Although this deep institutional knowledge is a core competitive advantage for the makers of Candy Crush, that doesn’t mean King isn’t still fine-tuning its approach.
At GDC Festival of Gaming earlier this month, King vice president and head of live operations Eva Ryott joined Candy Crush Saga head of gameplay Romain Jemma and Minecraft general manager Ryan Cooper for a discussion of both games’ success using the live service model. After the panel, GamesBeat spoke to Ryott to dig deeper into its insights and discuss the evolution of Candy Crush as a live service title. Here are some of the key takeaways.
The following interview has been lightly edited and condensed for length and clarity.
King is shifting from a quantitative data focus to a hybrid research model
Eva Ryott: “Minecraft historically had a lot of focus on qualitative insights, and then more recently started to look more at quantitative data, whereas we have gone the other route. We have historically been very data-driven in our approach to improvements and the evolution of the game. A few years back, because of how the market has evolved, we have also started to do bigger innovation, and with that comes a need to stay even closer to the players and understand their needs. So, we have come to learn that player research and qualitative insights are really important as well.”
GamesBeat: Perhaps the most significant case study showcasing King’s qualitative approach to player data was last year’s rollout of the “fish” — a new 2×2 candy pattern that the company launched inside Candy Crush Saga in February 2025. Ryott told GamesBeat that King had spent years fine-tuning the launch, rebalancing many of the game’s levels to ensure that they were still properly challenging and fun despite the significant gameplay update. King made over 60,000 level tweaks during this process, per Ryott, tapping into qualitative data from player interviews, focus groups and other channels to fine-tune level difficulty.
Monetization is a side-effect — not the focus
Eva Ryott: “This, for us, was about making the game more fun. It was player-engagement-focused, and it was about meeting unmet player needs — about having more variety and more tools and the player toolbox to clear levels.”
GamesBeat: King’s focus on gameplay and player experience over monetization is a key factor behind the popularity of Candy Crush, but it’s arguably easier for the game’s developers to focus on gameplay because of its massive scale. As other game companies have tried and failed to build new live service titles in recent years, some observers within the industry have been increasingly skeptical of live service as a business model, particularly for smaller IPs. Ryott acknowledged the strength of the Candy Crush player base, pointing out that “we have built this expertise over a very long time.”
King’s live service expertise is informing the wider Microsoft gaming network
Eva Ryott: “[Live service] is King’s expertise, and I would say it’s the wisdom that we bring into the Microsoft gaming family. So, we have remained focused on what we’re really good at, which is live-service mobile games, and our approach has largely remained the same.”
GamesBeat: Candy Crush was one of the biggest moneymakers at Activision Blizzard King even before the company was acquired by Microsoft in 2023, so it’s not surprising that the tech giant has stayed relatively hands-off with King. However, Ryott’s answer to this question shows how Microsoft is still gleaning additional value from owning King — particularly as Microsoft looks to further monetize its growing portfolio of in-game advertising inventory. Candy Crush is arguably the company’s golden child, showcasing how brands and ads can integrate smoothly into a popular game without significantly hurting its engagement numbers.