500 million active users, not subscribers. It generates a lot of revenue in micro-transactions. I have no idea how much in ad space, but I doubt it's as much as the MT's generate. 5.5 million active subscribers to wow generates more than $55 million a month (the lowest since launch but will rebound by a few million on Legion release), there is no way the ad space or micro-transactions of candy crush generate this much. None of the blizzard/activision IP's generate cash like WoW does and it's been doing it for a decade. Call of Duty generates a lot, but only in the burst month of a new release. WoW is the money making ocean all other games float on.

Real question is how do they profit from spending almost six billion dollars on candy crush, which is past it's prime in my opinion? It never has and never will make that much in ad revenue or micro-transactions. The user data is worth a lot, but I find it hard to believe that each active user is worth $11.80. Factor in that "most" candy crush users do not participate in direct revenue generations, that can make the cost per user in this buy out insanely expensive. In the US, the average game download of a ftp with MT's generates about 40c profit. They would need 14 billion NEW downloads to break even...

It's interesting, but I'm skeptical.