![]() ![]() It made thousands, which was quite a bit for three guys in a basement." "We had to turn it off because it became more and more noisy. In fact, hundreds of people were willing to pay $20 for uninterrupted games of Bejeweled, and the ka-ching! program rang frequently. And then the thing made a sound - 'ka-ching!'" John was sitting on his couch and his mom was yelling at him that he couldn't make money sitting on the couch. "We had a program that made a cash register 'ka-ching!' sound every time we made a sale. They called the $20 version "Bejeweled Deluxe."Īmazingly, people were willing to pay $20 to play Bejeweled. Maybe they didn't want to interrupt their games every time the phone rang. It sounds crazy in hindsight, but most users were on telephone modems. ![]() With Microsoft paying chump change, "we looked around for other ideas to make money," Kapalka says.Ī friend suggested selling a full, downloadable version for $20 per user. Then PopCap began charging people $20 to play Bejeweled. "We thought, if we do a bunch more of these deals and get them all going at the same price, maybe we can make living." With Microsoft paying $1,500 a month to license Bejeweled, Kapalka thought they had a business model. This was a black-and-white version of Bejeweled for the Palm Pilot. ![]() The archive includes images of the founders from when they were unknown teenage game nerds, forgotten black-and-white versions of Bejeweled for the Palm Pilot, and a picture of Snackers the cat, who makes Easter egg a appearances in most versions of the game. We asked PopCap to give us all the earliest photos they had from the birth of Bejeweled. ![]() Ten years later, their company was bought by Electronic Arts in a deal worth $1.3 billion. That's how influential and powerful the Bejeweled format is.īejeweled's creators - Jason Kapalka, Brian Fiete and John Vechey - once offered to sell the franchise to Microsoft for just $50,000. The success of Candy Crush is leading King toward an IPO. Most recently, Bejeweled was copied by for Candy Crush Saga, which in turn has triggered millions more downloads. The house in San Francisco where Bejeweled was born.Ībout 100 million units of Bejeweled have been sold in one form or another, throughout its history, according to PopCap founder Jason Kapalka.Īnd Bejeweled has spawned a vast array of copycat games, all based on the "match-three" genre that Bejeweled pioneered. ![]()
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