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King Uses Looker to Make Game Development More Agile
[February 13, 2018]

King Uses Looker to Make Game Development More Agile


Looker, a leading data platform company, today announced that King has implemented Looker across performance marketing, game development and design, and engineering to derive critical business insights.

King, famously known for the globally popular Candy Crush franchise, has over 200 game titles and had 290 million monthly active users as of fourth quarter 2017. From day one, King has been a data-driven company, using data analytics to help their developers create and test their games. Today, with millions of game players generating massive amounts of data and titles coming to market quickly, King was looking for a solution that could deliver the right insights to the right people at the right time.

"King is a highly data-driven company, and we knew that if we could get more value out of our data it would allow us to be more agile and deliver the best experience for our users," said Jonathan Palmer, Business Intelligence Lead at King. "Looker has gone far beyond our expectations. From the game studios and business users, to our data and engineering teams, Looker is helping us to operationalize our business. We're using fresh data to make better decisions, faster than ever and at the same time freeing up our data teams."

King's requirements for a new analytics solution were to:

  • Handle both complex and simple data workflows to satisfy both the data team and the business users
  • Provide governed data to stop the fragmentation of definitions
  • Be modern with 21st century features to keep pace with King's development practices
  • Integrate seamlessly with King's technology stack, infrastructure and other tools

Over 450 highly-engaged King employees run over 130,000 queries monthly, creating custom dashboards and scheduled reports using Looker. According to Palmer, King continues to benefit from driving Looker throughout the organization.

"If our data team had tried to build the hundreds of reports created by our users, it would have taken them over a year," added Palmer. "To boost efficiency we are now using Looker throughout King to help us derive critical business insights."

"King's requirements align perfectly with Looker's capabilities," said John O'Keeffe, Vice President of Looker EMEA. "hey had an array of tools that didn't mix perfectly and could produce inconsistencies. By centralizing the data workflow with a full platform across a number of functions users can easily self-serve and know they were all working with the same defined data. We're thrilled to help King meet its data needs across the company."



Dive deeper into how King is using Looker.

About Looker


Looker is a complete data platform that offers data analytics and business insights to every department, and easily integrates into applications to deliver data directly into the decision-making process. The company is powering data-driven cultures at more than 1200 industry-leading and innovative companies such as Sony, Amazon, The Economist, Spotify (News - Alert), Etsy, Lyft and Kickstarter. The company is headquartered in Santa Cruz, California, with offices in San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Boulder, London and Dublin, Ireland. Investors include CapitalG, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Meritech Capital Partners, Redpoint Ventures, First Round Capital, Sapphire Ventures and Goldman Sachs. For more information, connect with us on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube or visit looker.com.

About King

King is a leading interactive entertainment company for the mobile world. It had 290 million monthly active users as of fourth quarter 2017 across web, social and mobile platforms, and has developed more than 200 exclusive games that are enjoyed all around the world through its king.com and royalgames.com websites, Facebook, and mobile distribution platforms such as the Apple App Store, Google (News - Alert) Play Store, Microsoft Windows App Store and Amazon Appstore. King was acquired by Activision Blizzard (NASDAQ: ATVI) in February 2016. King has game studios in Stockholm, Malmö, London, Barcelona, Berlin and Seattle, along with offices in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Malta, Tokyo, and Bucharest.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-looking Statements: Information in this press release that involves King's expectations, plans, intentions or strategies regarding the future, including statements with respect to King's use of Looker, are forward-looking statements that are not facts and involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Factors that could cause King's actual future results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements set forth in this release include unanticipated product delays and other factors identified in the risk factors sections of Activision (News - Alert) Blizzard's most recent annual report on Form 10-K and any subsequent quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. The forward-looking statements in this release are based upon information available to King and Activision Blizzard as of the date of this release, and neither King nor Activision Blizzard assumes any obligation to update any such forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements believed to be true when made may ultimately prove to be incorrect. These statements are not guarantees of the future performance of King or Activision Blizzard and are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors, some of which are beyond its control and may cause actual results to differ materially from current expectations.


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