Candy Crush played by almost 20 percent of population in Hong Kong

The company behind Candy Crush has revealed that the game is played by around 1.3 million people a day in Hong Kong, which is almost 20 percent of the city’s population. Candy Crush is a puzzle game where players earn points by matching candies — sort of like Bejeweled.

This nugget of information was revealed on TechCrunch by Riccardo Zacconi, the CEO of King, the mobile and web gaming company behind the smash hit.

According to AppData, Candy Crush has some 45.6 million monthly players and 14.4 million daily players, becoming to King the equivalent of what Farmville was to Zynga.

While the game’s success has taken the CEO by surprise, it is certainly no accident as King operates 150 games on its destination site, which functions like a lab where successful titles can be brought over to Facebook and smartphones. This process minimizes the risk of failure by ensuring that games are adequately tested before hitting mainstream.

So far, King has ported seven titles to Facebook and two to mobile. Its games are played by about 49 million people every day — close to Zynga’s 54 million daily actives.

Not bad for a company that was close to being sold off four years ago.