Answer: That is the price that Activision Blizzard recently paid to acquire King Digital Entertainment (creator of Candy Crush Saga game).

From Reuters:

Video game maker Activision Blizzard (ATVI.O) will buy “Candy Crush Saga” creator King Digital Entertainment (KING.N) for $5.9 billion, as the heavyweight of console and PC-gaming makes a major push into the faster-growing mobile market.

The deal is one of the biggest in the industry in recent years, more than twice the size of Microsoft Inc’s (MSFT.O) $2.5 billion purchase of “Minecraft” maker Mojang last year, and the biggest-ever acquisition of a mobile gaming company.

You might use this acquisition as an opportunity for students to complete a webquest. Their goal: find recent news articles that have information supporting the deal and information opposing the deal. They have been hired by a competing firm that is considering whether they should outbid Activision Blizzard to get King Digital (occasionally these lead to bidding wars with several companies competing to acquire one company.  You might give your students a graphical organizer with two columns and headers that they can complete as they read these articles:

Student’s would then read 3-4 articles to complete a list of arguments both for and against the acquisition. After weighing all the factors, they would have to make a decision whether on whether they should seek to pay more to get King Digital and their rationale.

Here are some articles that might be a good starting point:

• Activision Buys Candy Crush Maker for $5.9 Billion (Wired)
• Bobby Kotick’s Activision Blizzard To Buy King Digital, Maker of Candy Crush (NY Times)
• Activision’s Candy Crush Deal Proves that Girls Got Game Too (Bloomberg)
• Activision’s King Deal: Paying to Play Candy Crush (Wall Street Journal)

About the Author

Tim Ranzetta

Tim's saving habits started at seven when a neighbor with a broken hip gave him a dog walking job. Her recovery, which took almost a year, resulted in Tim getting to know the bank tellers quite well (and accumulating a savings account balance of over $300!). His recent entrepreneurial adventures have included driving a shredding truck, analyzing executive compensation packages for Fortune 500 companies and helping families make better college financing decisions. After volunteering in 2010 to create and teach a personal finance program at Eastside College Prep in East Palo Alto, Tim saw firsthand the impact of an engaging and activity-based curriculum, which inspired him to start a new non-profit, Next Gen Personal Finance.

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