Candy Crush Saga developer King will be closing its online web portal RoyalGames.com in December, after 18 years online.
Originally King.com, the gaming website was the original home of Candy Crush Saga before the game’s shift to Facebook and mobile platforms. Now, the online games portal, which is currently home to the likes of Candy Crush Saga and Bubble Witch will close on December 7 following technical issues and a recent PayPal investigation.
“Hello Royal Gamers, for 18 years, players around the world have enjoyed Royal Games’ competitive tournaments,” reads an official blog post. “At the end of 2020, we shared an update with you that due to changing web-based technology on major browsers, we would be adjusting the game services we are able to offer to players. This evolving landscape has led us to the make the difficult decision to close down the Royal Games site.”
The business, owned by Activision Blizzard, has clearly suffered since browser games stepped away from using Flash. Now, the website will shut down and remove its remaining games at 10am GMT on December 7, 2021.
“This decision was by no means easy. As this journey is coming to a close, we want to thank all of you, our dedicated players, for your time spent at Royal Games. We hope that you had many memorable experiences here, and we hope to see you on one of our other platforms.”
Home to paid versions of the company’s most popular games, RoyalGames allowed players to pay a fee to enter tournaments for cash prizes. But withdrawals from the service were paused for a period of 10 months amid investigations into its business operations by PayPal.
In fact, the situation was only resolved earlier this week, with users finally starting to receive their winnings.
