Are you embarrassed to admit you play Candy Crush Saga for way too long each day? No worries—you don't have an addiction, per a rep from King, the game's maker. The Guardian reports senior executive Alex Dale recently appeared before a UK Commons committee looking into addictive tech and said 3.4% of daily users spend at least three hours on Candy Crush. But no one should worry too much about addiction, he says. "Among 270 million [monthly] players, we have between two and three contacts a month from people concerned about having spent too much money or time on the game. It is a very, very small number," he said. Dale also said people who tend to play most have time to burn, like the elderly or those who are recovering from sickness or injury.
The chair of the committee, however, said King shouldn't rely on consumer self-reporting to determine whether they're addicted. Whether you want to call players' penchant for the game an addiction or unrepentant happiness, as Dale does, it's lucrative for King: Variety reported earlier this year that all Candy Crush games brought in $1.5 billion in 2018, or an average of $4.2 million a day. But what of over-the-top individual spending, like one guy Dale mentioned who spent $2,600 in one day on the game's gold bar currency? Per the Guardian, Dale told the Commons committee that was a completely "rational" decision, since the player bought the gold bars on sale and then used them in the game over a stretch of seven months. (A California man ruptured a tendon playing the game.)
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