Candy Crush Saga maker King hunts staff for new bestseller
CANDY Crush Saga game maker King Digital has gone on a hiring spree in a bid to dream up more bestselling games.
The British computer games maker, whose shares tanked after its initial public offering (IPO) last week, is advertising 165 new jobs, which would increase its workforce by a quarter.
Around half of the advertised roles are for designers and engineers, as King seeks to create another big hit.
The roles are advertised on its corporate site, with jobs in offices including London, Stockholm, Malta and San Francisco.
Investors so far seem fearful that King is just a one-hit wonder.
The company offers over 180 games but its two-year-old Candy Crush Saga game, in which users move candies to line up at least three of the same colour, accounted for over three-quarters of King’s revenue for the last three months of 2013.
The technology business went public at $22.50 a share, raising $500m and valuing the company at more than $7bn. But its stock price fell by more than 15 per cent on its first day of trading and shares closed last night at $18.19 on the Nasdaq.
Since Twitter’s market debut in November, King’s IPO was the largest US tech IPO and the second-worst performing after textbook rental and academic service company Chegg, which plummeted 23 per cent.
However, chief executive Ricardo Zacconi described the disappointing debut as the start of a marathon for the company, adding: “I think the opportunity [for King] is great.”
“What we are here for is to build a portfolio of games,” he told CNBC. “We want to build a network of players, of loyal players, who play our portfolio of games,” he added.