King Announces Candy Crush Saga's Half Billion Installs On First Birthday: IPO Reportedly In the Works

While King, maker of Candy Crush Saga, is possibly heading towards an IPO, the leading mobile and Facebook game company is celebrating the one-year anniversary of its hit game, and letting the world know how popular Candy Crush is.

One year ago on Nov. 15, Candy Crush Saga launched as an app for mobile devices, eventually becoming one of the most popular games in the world. To celebrate, King has announced just how popular the game has become: the latest numbers show that Candy Crush Saga has been installed 500 million times on Facebook or mobile devices.

"The past year has been one of the most exciting times for King since Candy Crush Saga launched on mobile," said King Games Guru Tommy Palm in a press release, according to Gamasutra. "The incredible milestone of more than half a billion downloads of the game, as well as the continued enthusiasm from our community, really delights the entire King team. Fans can look forward to even more exciting new Candy Crush Saga content over the coming months, including an exciting new twist to the game."

In addition to the half a billion-install figure, King is celebrating Candy Crush Saga's birthday with a few other statistics. First, over 150 billion individual games of the colorful, addictive casual game have been played over the past year. Second, while 61 percent of Candy Crushers in the U.K. play during their commutes, the vast majority of Candy Crush Saga gamers in the U.S. - 78 percent - play Candy Crush Saga while watching TV. Finally, one in every 23 Facebook users (of which there are a total of 1.15 billion across the world), is a fan of Candy Crush Saga.

Candy Crush Saga fans can look forward to "a range of new updates and in-game anniversary treats" in the next weeks, as part of King's celebration of its hit game. You can follow the celebration on social media with the hashtag #candycrush1year.

Candy Crush Saga is available on Facebook, Google Play, iTunes App Store, and Amazon's Appstore.

Since early summer this year, the top mobile app/game maker, King, has been rumored to be going public on the stock market, after the popularity of Candy Crush Saga became apparent, crushing King's full-year financial goals for 2013 in just one month earlier this year and closing the gap between King and its chief rival, Zynga (maker of the incredibly popular Facebook game Farmville, among other titles).

The company hasn't announced any plans for an IPO yet, saying to TechCrunch in June, "There are no current plans for that. What we did do is organize the company in such a way that were we to decide to do that, we were set up to do it. We would keep the option open, if you like." Rumors swirled in early October, though, based on anonymous sources saying that King has filed an S-1 confidential IPO with the SEC - the same type of IPO procedure Twitter used to go public relatively quickly, quietly and painlessly recently. It's estimated that a King IPO could be worth as much as $5 billion.