Candy Crush success leads to King decision to close older Facebook games despite continuing to attract players
Social gaming company King has revealed that it is to remove old Saga games such as Bubble Saga, Miner Speed, Hoop de Loop Saga and Puzzle Saga from Facebook, despite still receiving hundreds of thousands of active users.
The publisher, which in July overtook Zynga to become the top game developer on Facebook, will remove the games, which pale in user numbers against newer games such as Candy Crush.
A spokesperson for King told gaming website Gamasutra that the decision was one of resource. "The games need to be maintained in order to continue to offer a strong player experience... Where we prioritise our time and efforts is a key decision and we believe that we should focus on developing new titles and maintaining a gameplay experience for our key titles."
However, the publisher has said that it does still plan to release new games in the Saga series this year on Facebook, and will also expand its development roster, with a target expansion of an additional 200 members of staff by the end of the year.
Read Uri Baruchin's thoughts on the marketing of Candy Crush in his blog on The Drum.