King co-founder and chairman Riccardo Zacconi has served his last day with the company.
As announced via LinkedIn, yesterday was Zacconi’s last day with the Candy Crush creator, after 17 years of service. He initially stepped down from his position as CEO last year, a role he had held for 16 years and officially left on July 1st 2019.
“It’s been an incredible ride, one that I would never have dreamt of when we started,” said Zacconi.
“I would like to thank the entire team at King, all the king alumni, my co-founders Sebastian Knutsson, Thomas Hartwig, Lars Markgren, Patrik Stymne and Toby Rowland, my friend and superstar COO Stephane Kurgan as well as our former board and investors, Humam Sakhnini who is now running King and Bobby Kotick who has welcomed us to Activision and, last but not least, all our players.”
In his farewell message, the former chief exec implored the company to continue hiring strong people, staff that will better the experience for King’s players. Furthermore, he reminded the team to “continue treating others how you want to be treated.”
Great leadership
Under Zacconi’s leadership, King created one of the most popular games ever to grace mobile devices, Candy Crush Saga. In Activision Blizzard’s latest financial results, it was revealed that King was up year-over-year when it came to monthly active users, hitting 271 million in Q2 2020, driven largely by its popular match-three puzzle franchise.
