King shuts old Saga games down to keep the franchise rolling

Back before social games giant King was truly experiencing the goldrush that is currently rolling in as a result of its Saga Facebook games, the company launched other titles in the series that served as testing beds. Now King is shutting a number of these earlier Saga games down to make way for the newer titles, and to reallocate resources that these games demand on a daily basis. From September 10, titles like Hoop de Loop Saga, Bubble Saga and Puzzle Saga will be removed from Facebook. Hoop de Loop Saga currently sees 329,000 daily active users, while Bubble Saga sees 249,000 daily active users. While these titles still have hundreds of thousands of users playing, they simply can't compare to the number of players who load up Candy Crush Saga, Pet Rescue Saga et al each day, and as a result, King is looking to shift its resources around. "It's primarily a resource decision," a King spokesperson told Gamasutra. "The games need to be maintained in order to continue to offer a strong player experience... Where we prioritize our time and efforts is a key decision and we believe that we should focus on developing new titles and maintaining a gameplay experience for our key titles." King was keen to stress that this does not at all reflect the company's view on the future of Facebook games, and that it will continue to bring games to Facebook in the future. The company currently has five titles in Facebook's top 15 grossing games, all of which are Saga titles. Notably, the games that are being removed from Facebook will remain on King.com to play. "This will not affect headcount as King is aiming to be at over 750 developers by end of year," continued the spokesperson. King currently employs 550 people, up from 100 in August 2011.