Activision buys developer of Candy Crush, King Digital, for stupid amount of money

If you ever once were concerned about Activision's coffers, this will probably put you at ease.

Candy Crush developer King Digital Entertainment has been acquired by the Santa Monica publishing giant for an astounding $5.9 billion. Yes, that's billion. That's not a typo. While Activision has made many acquisitions over the course of the last several years, this is one that makes you sit up and scratch your head a bit. King is not a development studio that pushes out massive amounts of games or even look at console titles. Obviously, Candy Crush is the most recognizable title that the Dublin, Ireland-based studio is most known for. The point here, though, is that every game that the studio has developed has been for mobile applications and Facebook.

Putting this into perspective a bit, Activision's check will trump almost half of the countries in the world Gross National Product. Let that sink in for a minute.

The acquisition is certainly a message to the rest of the gaming world: Those free-to-play games that people love to lose hours of time and money to in their cash shop? Yes, if you create one that does well, you too could end up rolling in a massive amount of money.