Matching digital candy isn’t rocket science. Yet, fourteen years after its launch, Candy Crush Saga still pulls in a cool $1 billion a year. It is a juggernaut. Over 150 million people swipe these virtual sweets every single month. When pop star Meghan Trainor wanted to drop a music video, she didn’t go to MTV or YouTube first; she chose a mobile puzzle game. That is the kind of absurd leverage we are talking about.
The gaming industry is a monster. At $386 billion globally, it makes Hollywood and the music business look like pocket change. Microsoft knows this. They swallowed Activision Blizzard for a staggering $69 billion in 2023, inheriting franchises like Call of Duty and World of Warcraft. But right at the top of their Xbox portfolio sits Candy Crush, a game originally bought when Activision snagged developer King for $5.9 billion back in 2016. It was a steal.
Now comes the robot threat. Generative AI can spit out code and game designs in seconds. Tech evangelists predict a bloodbath for human creators. But Paula Ingvar, the game’s general manager in Stockholm, isn’t buying the hype. She insists on human touch. Every single one of the game’s 20,000-plus levels was built by a real person. No algorithms. Just designers crafting digital obstacles.
“We want people to play Candy for the rest of their lives,” Ingvar says. It is a bold pitch. To do that, the game has to be low-friction. It runs on ancient phones. It works offline. It is designed to boost your mood in three minutes on a crowded train. While they use AI bots to playtest new levels in minutes—saving players from buggy releases—the actual design remains strictly human. You are playing against a human mind, trying to outsmart a real creator. That tension is the secret sauce.
Who is playing? Mostly women. They make up 62% of the player base. Historically, the gaming industry ignored women. Big mistake. While men might spend more on gaming overall, women dominate in-app purchases, which account for 95% of Candy Crush’s massive revenue. It is a goldmine built on an underserved demographic.
Ingvar is a rare breed: a female leader in a notoriously male-dominated industry. Women make up less than 30% of the tech workforce in the US, and barely 21% in the UK. She has seen the boys’ club firsthand. While she pushes for diverse teams to make better business decisions, she watches the cultural landscape shift with concern. The political backlash against diversity and the rise of regressive internet trends like “tradwives” worry her. But she remains focused on the long game.
Can a simple matching game survive another decade without succumbing to cheap AI automation? Skeptics doubt it. Wall Street wants cost cuts. But Ingvar is betting on human taste. In a world increasingly flooded with cheap, automated garbage, handmade digital candy might just be the ultimate luxury.
