King has taken up investing in the studios of former employees

King today not only churns out three-in-a-row one after another, but also invests in teams founded by his former managers.

The story, however, is not the simplest.

In April 2015, Alexander Ekvall leaves King. This man was responsible for three years in the “candy” company for games, being its product director. Alexander is one of those who was behind the success of the original Candy Crush Saga.

In the same April, Alexander, together with people from Rovio, DICE, Unity, Zynga, Next Games and Wooga, launches the studio Snowprint Studios. The goal is to develop shareware games aimed at the midcore audience. The first project of the studio, which has not yet been announced, is a role-playing game based on Scandinavian mythology.

At the time of launch, the studio receives the first seed round. Then Jari Ovaskainen, one of the first investors of Supercell, acted as the main investor. So there is nothing surprising in the fact that Alexander, who took the post of CEO at Snowprint Studios, was very ambitious at that time.

“There are two giants in the mobile games market today. One is King, the other is Supercell. We want to become the third,” he told the Swedish publication DiDigital.

But a year later, the announcement never took place, and the release of the first game was postponed to the second half of 2016.

And so, as part of the next round, which was very quiet (the round itself took place in June, the Swedish media found out about it in July, and the information reached world publications only in August), it became known about major investments in Snowprint Studios from King itself.

In total, according to the results of the round, Snowprint Studios managed to raise $ 5.7 million. The investment was received in exchange for 29% of the studio. That is, the total estimate of a small team, numbering 12 people for another year, turned out to be around $ 20 million.

Who acted as an investor, except King, is unknown (but more than one company acted as venture capitalists). Moreover, the investment did not come directly from King, but from Midasplayer AB, the company’s internal development studio, also known as King Stockholm.

Why everything is so complicated is unclear. Does King plan to further increase its share in the young studio, too. In any case, the name of Snowprint Studios should be remembered. It’s not often that big players are willing to support their former employees.

Sources: DiDigital, Pocket Gamer, Develop