author: Miriam Moszczynska
King Earns More Than Blizzard, Claims Activision's Financial Report
Activision's financial report has shed light on Blizzard's poor condition. Not only does the developer bring in little revenue, but it also struggles with declining player numbers.
Activision's financial report shows that Blizzard earned less than F2P mobile game publisher King. This situation did not happen only last year, and the earnings of Candy Crush Saga's developer have been exceeding those of the creator of World of Warcraft for the last 3 years.
What went wrong?
Recently, hearing the phrase 'Blizzard', most gamers reacted with the word 'drama', which reflected on the developer's financial results.
- After all, allegations of harassment threats and movbbing allowed by Bobby Kotick do not sound like a good promo campaign.
- Blizzard also hasn't delivered any big games in the last three years (only the mediocre Diablo II: Resurrected and the completely failed Warcraft III: Reforged).
- One free-to-play title like Hearthstone is unnot able to generate huge earnings.
- King, on the other hand, bases its earnings on relatively free, but highly monetized, mobile games, including the extremely popular Candy Crush Saga.
Gamers are turning away from Blizzard
For nearly 5 years now, gamers have been showing less and less interest in games from Blizzard.
- The decline started at the beginning of 2017 and continues.
- As a result, the number of users playing Blizzard games has dropped by 22 million by the end of 2021.
- Also King's products no longer attract as much attention (the decline began after the acquisition by Activision), although they can still boast 240 million people (as of the end of 2021).
- Activision, on the other hand, has made a lot of progress in terms of number of active players. It has not fallen below 100 million since 2019 and is growing rapidly during launches.
Blizzard needs to get its act together
The thing definitely on the plus side for fans of Blizzard games is the acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft. The merger of companies has given the community hope for new games from the Californian developer.
- The acquisition could be a good opportunity to bring some older game franchises back to life.
- We also know that both Diablo IV and Overwatch 2 are in the pipeline.
- So far, the only information we've received about them is that the (yet to be announced) release date for both titles has been delayed.
