Why I Uninstalled Candy Crush Saga

Look I’m not ashamed to admit it; I really enjoyed playing Candy Crush Saga. If you don’t know, it’s a puzzle game where you swap different pieces of candy to achieve certain goals and rack up points. It starts off a bit like Bejeweled and gets more complicated moving forward. It’s Bejeweled-like feel is why I liked it in the first place. I played a lot but tried not to bother friends outside the game with notifications. However, recently I read that King (the makers of Candy Crush Saga) trademarked the word ‘candy’. And worse? They are acting on it.

I understand protecting your Intellectual Property, I really do. I’ve been looking into trademarks for a couple of things I’m working on. The difference is that as far as I know, other people aren’t combining the 2 words I have in mind. King took a dictionary word, trademarked it and said, “Now no one else can use this word in any games they make…or clothes, for good measure.” They have already (5 days after having the TM granted) starting sending letter to other game developers. This is so, so bad for the community.

King has made it so they are the only people who can make games about candy. That even sounds ridiculous; let it sink in. I uninstalled Candy Crush Saga because I won’t support a company like that; they are killing innovation and making it so they don’t have to innovate; they can just hide behind a lawyer*.

I encourage you to uninstall the game too and never look back. There are plenty of hard-working developers out there making puzzle games. I’d rather throw some money at them than play a free game made by an awful company.

*I get that I’m being a little hypocritical here because I feel Apple kind of does the same thing, and when I can get away with it, I don’t buy Apple products. However, there’s too much my Mac computers help me with as a developer for me to boycott the company completely.