Remember Candy Crush? Still play it, even? Well, its parent company just made a huge announcement: they are moving a large portion of its data processing onto the public Google Cloud Platform by 2019. This isn’t an unusual move today for companies that deal with a lot of data. In fact, around 82% of companies have reported saving money by moving some or all data processing to the cloud. So what does this mean for Candy Crush?
When the mobile game ‘Candy Crush’ first dropped on Facebook in April 2012, casual and experienced gamers alike went nuts for its simple, colorful, addictive gameplay. The result? Less than two years later, its daily users rivaled that of Twitter. As by far the most-used product to come out of game-developing company King, Candy Crush became the shining jewel in King’s crown.
Even in 2018, the statistics coming out of Candy Crush are still impressive. The game has been downloaded in all seven continents — yes, that’s right, all seven. Some bored Antarctic scientist did indeed download Candy Crush in their off time.
Back to our opening question, what does this move to the cloud mean for Candy Crush and King? Many companies these days are moving to cloud-based computing. It’s often an energy-efficient and cost-efficient choice for those who process a lot of data, like King. Some fans have speculated that the move is to save money in anticipation of Candy Crush mania fading, but King seems confident that the move is simply for the good of the company’s growth, not its decline.
First vice-president of technology at King, Åsa Bredin, had this to say about using cloud computing to better handle and analyze their massive amounts of data:
It is very hard to know exactly what lies ahead, so by being able to act quickly on insights, we can also handle challenges better… One area where we expect to see a lot of innovation in mobile gaming is around our relevance. With machine learning, we predict offers and suggestions for what to tackle next and what will become increasingly relevant.
Another interesting tidbit for techies and business watchers? Bringing such a big client on Google Cloud services is another drop in the bucket of stressors Amazon Web Services has accumulated this year. King has specifically stated that they chose Google services because of their innovative technology that seemed suitable for gaming needs. It will be interesting to see how that affects future gaming partnerships with the two cloud competitors.