The puzzle game studio set up by two ex-King execs as an apparent successor to the Candy Crush maker has closed, according to a flurry of LinkedIn posts.
Cheekily-titled studio Queen Digital Entertainment, also known as QDE Studio, was founded in 2022 by former King execs Sebastian Knutsson and Stephane Kurgan.
Reports from 2024 and 2025 suggested that the outfit had landed as much as $50m in VC funding and had set up offices in Ireland and Sweden to make new, King-style mobile puzzle games.
Appmagic data states that the company had four different puzzle games in and out of beta testing from September 2024 onwards. One game, Tail Team, still appears to be live.
But the studio now appears to have closed, according to multiple LinkedIn posts from affected staff. The posts suggest that the studio had been actively making games for three years, and that the company had grown to employ 25 staff in that time. LinkedIn also shows roughly 25-30 staff currently working at QDE Studio.
Knutsson cofounded King and worked there for nearly 20 years, before leaving to pursue investment opportunities in 2022. Kurgan was King COO and a director at the company for eight years between 2011-2019. Both execs saw the company through its $7bn IPO in 2014 and its $5.9bn acquisition by Activision in 2016.
The Business Post and Forbes claimed in 2024 that Knutsson and Kurgan had raised €16.5m ($~18.9m), and hired at least 10 staff from their former workplace, King, including its former VP Anna Lernmark, who reportedly led the Stockholm office.
In September 2025, Swedish finance newspaper Dagens Industri reported that Queen had raised 340m SEK, or ~$35.5m. The investment reportedly came from American VC firm Accel and British outfit Index Ventures.
The team were reported to be working on Candy Crush style puzzlers, and according to Appmagic data the firm had been actively testing four games since September 2024: Pet Panic (limited release in Sept 2024), Tail Team (May 2025), Block Hero (Oct 2025) and Wild Joker Poker (May 2026).
Appmagic suggests all four titles registered downloads in soft launch markets like India, Malaysia and the UK. Tail Team and Pet Panic were the only titles to reach a notable number of players, with ~60k and ~830k installs respectively. Tail Team is the only title that still appears to be live on iOS only.
We have asked Knutsson and Kurgan for comment and clarification on this story and we will update this article if they respond.
