The Finest Games Have not Been Made But × Supercell

It was a near-record 12 months that just about matched our 2024 outcomes. The 12 months was pushed principally by an unbelievable, historic 12 months of Clash Royale. On the opposite facet, launching new hit video games stays as onerous as ever – not only for us, however throughout the whole business, particularly within the West. Squad Busters turned Supercell’s first-ever killed recreation after world launch. We ought to all study as a lot as doable from that, so I’ll share some necessary learnings on this publish (a lot of them painfully apparent in hindsight!)

It is an attention-grabbing time to be within the cellular video games market. The market is essentially flat with modest development, at finest. Case in level, based on Newzoo, the market has grown simply 3% per 12 months on common within the final 5 years. In some ways, it appears like our business is at a crossroads. Are we glad with the established order – counting on optimization and incremental enhancements to the good video games we have already made? Or are we courageous sufficient to dream larger and be extra formidable about what this business might turn out to be? And if we’re extra formidable, what do we have to do to kick the business into new development?

I imagine the reply is innovation. For an nearly 16-year-old, 900-person firm like Supercell, that is not simple. But it is not stopping us from attempting! This is possibly crucial motive I’m penning this 12 months’s publish: to achieve out to formidable recreation creators who’re pushed to construct and launch probably the most revolutionary video games for the widest viewers of gamers doable. We are dedicated to pursuing this wanted innovation in as some ways as we are able to, and we would like you right here creating new experiences for gamers with us at Supercell.

But earlier than I get into all of that, let me begin with what went nicely. There’s quite a bit to have fun!

Clash Royale: A Historic Year

Last 12 months, I known as Brawl Stars’ development ‘historic.’ Now I’m about to make use of that phrase once more for Clash Royale.

Royale’s re-engaged gamers doubled. New gamers grew nearly 500%. Every main measure of playtime and engagement grew considerably. And possibly most significantly, Clash Royale as soon as once more turned the recreation to play with associates all over the world. It felt like 2016 once more. (Has it actually been nearly 10 years?)

I need to take a second to have fun this, as a result of what occurred deserves celebrating. A recreation approaching its tenth 12 months did not simply maintain on – it exploded. That’s terribly uncommon in our business. It’s proof of what is doable when a proficient crew relentlessly focuses on making issues higher for gamers.

The apparent query: What did the crew do? So I went to Aleksandar (Sasha) Marković, General Manager of Clash Royale, and got here away energized by what he shared.

First, Sasha and the crew are remarkably grounded given what they achieved. Clash Royale is presently declining from its latest peak, so something they’ve realized comes with the notice that challenges stay. As Sasha put it: “While this rare ‘explosive growth’ that doesn’t happen for most games has happened twice for us in the past two years, there are no certainties here. And while we may have learned a bit about this kind of growth, we haven’t yet learned how to sustain it.”

One precondition for Royale’s latest development, and Brawl Stars’ earlier than it in 2024, is the gamers themselves. For huge, speedy development to occur, word-of-mouth discovery has to occur. “You and your friends have to talk about the games you’re playing. Not true of every audience or demographic.” This could clarify why Clash of Clans, Hay Day, and Boom Beach have seen extra gradual development and declines, whereas Brawl’s and Royale’s ups and downs are extra… dizzying.

So what drove Royale’s explosion in 2025? It really began earlier than final 12 months. The crew made adjustments to development, simplified the sport by eradicating extraneous techniques, and added fascinating new content material, each in-game and out-of-game. “All of this makes the game more approachable and makes progression more possible for players. Itself, this doesn’t create anything immediate, but it creates the ability for returning players to have a much better time, IF they return,” Sasha advised me.

Whether gamers really return includes a little bit of pyrotechnics, apparently, Sasha began speaking in regards to the unpredictability of sparks catching fireplace. In these eternally video games, there are various “sparks” within the type of new content material and options. If neighborhood sentiment is mostly optimistic, any of those sparks can catch fireplace. If sentiment is adverse, they nearly definitely can’t.

“In 2024, we started giving away Evos and had the first signs of sparks, but also at the same time as the Goblin Journey update, which didn’t land. Disappointment became negative and dampened sentiment for a while.” But in early 2025, when sentiment had returned to a greater state, a fairly sudden spark helped begin a blaze – with the assistance of Michael Bolton, no much less! The Barboltian marketing campaign round Valentine’s Day and the free Barbarian Evolution reward marked the beginning of Clash Royale’s explosion. Evos had been round since June 2023, in order Sasha mentioned: “We think players like new content eventually, but perhaps not always in the moment.”

It additionally takes innovation and risk-taking. The crew launched Merge Tactics, a brand new gameplay mode born out of Supercell’s canceled Clash Mini mission. Turning a failure into gasoline for one thing new.

What does catching fireplace appear like? “First you see active players engaging more. As they do that, you see recently churned players return, then longer-tail re-engagement. Finally, you see entirely new players show up. At first, it happens very slowly, but the virtuous cycle of word of mouth snowballs.” None of our inner forecasts for both Brawl Stars or Royale predicted the following rise in metrics, proper up till it really occurred. Forecasting in video games is difficult.

The story would not finish there. The Royale neighborhood is pissed off with some latest adjustments, and the crew is listening and dealing to deal with it. The similar dynamics that allow virtuous development can allow a vicious cycle. As Sasha famous: “At some point, once you begin a slide, it makes sense for word of mouth to turn negative.”

But wrapping up our dialog, Sasha wished everybody to know: “The team won’t ever compromise trying to deliver value for all kinds of players. We have players who love to gain trophies, increase levels, earn new card forms, play for free, or spend their money. They aren’t ‘one thing.’ And in the mind of the team, Royale is the best mobile-native gameplay ever released. We love it. We are crazy about it. This is why we will never break that promise.”

Here’s what Clash Royale’s 12 months – and Brawl Stars’ 12 months earlier than it – proves to me: there’s huge untapped potential in our stay video games. Games which were round for years, even over a decade, can nonetheless turn out to be significantly better variations of themselves for gamers, unlocking explosive new development. The ceiling is a lot larger than we thought. That’s extremely thrilling!

Squad Busters: Busted! What We Learned

After 75 million gamers downloaded Squad Busters and spent over $100 million on it, after an aggressive design pivot, the crew made the tough however acceptable resolution to close it down. It was Supercell’s first-ever killed recreation after world launch.

When I say launching new video games is more durable than ever, Squad is a working example. Why did we launch it? Why did not it work? What can we study? I requested Eino Joas and Paula Báguena to share their ideas.

Development started in 2020. After three years targeted on core gameplay, the crew launched the primary closed beta in February 2023 with 5,000 gamers. Results did not meet objectives – D7 retention was 29%. The crew spent three months making materials adjustments, including extra participant company with boosts, skills, and map occasions. The second beta in May 2023 with greater than 140,000 gamers confirmed vital enchancment: D1 retention hit 61%, D3 was 44%, and D7 climbed to 38%.

At the identical time, prime content material creators from our Creator Program constantly rated Squad their favourite recreation in improvement. Apple and Google have been excited. The crew had demonstrated they may pivot rapidly primarily based on participant suggestions.

And truthfully, inner stress was constructing at Supercell to take daring dangers. But don’t get me fallacious – not top-down stress from me or the management crew – simply the human actuality that we hadn’t efficiently launched a recreation in six years. As Eino put it: “We had a success rate of 100% on our previous five launches. We all felt that our risk appetite was getting too constrained, and we weren’t being bold enough.”

So we launched.

Many issues went nicely. The crew scaled up considerably, with dozens of Supercellians from different groups leaping in to assist. The execution was outstanding – they made quite a bit occur in a really brief time. As Eino mentioned: “It wasn’t actually just a team effort. It was a company effort.”

But the sport did not work with a big sufficient group of gamers. Most regarding: participant habits and retention after world launch did not match what we noticed in closed betas.

The key learnings, which really feel apparent in hindsight:

• Even massive beta samples do not predict world habits. You can’t draw dependable conclusions even from 100,000+ gamers.

• Don’t skip testing meta and long run retention. Squad’s betas targeted nearly completely on core gameplay and solely validated D7 retention. Soft launch was just one month—not sufficient to validate longer-term retention and monetization.

• Don’t construct a large advertising push earlier than the product imaginative and prescient is deeply validated. We would not repeat this beneath the identical circumstances.

As Eino mirrored: “We wanted the game to be for everyone. Everyone could pick it up, understand the controls, and enjoy it. But there was a huge gap between expectations and reality. We had 40 million pre-registrations, 75 million installs, but not a lot of those players stuck around. They came in and didn’t find what they were looking for. We were blind to that.”

Paula, Squad’s neighborhood supervisor at launch, added: “The players in our ecosystem are the most passionate about Supercell. That comes with high expectations. They hold us to a high standard. But we should hold ourselves to an even higher one.”

The backside line: the crew believes they need to have run a 3rd, longer-duration beta. That may need uncovered the mismatch between the sport and participant expectations earlier. It sounds easy. It wasn’t.

Squad exhibits but once more our tradition of celebrating failures with champagne – and studying every little thing we are able to from them. It additionally exhibits how onerous it’s to launch an outlier hit recreation at our stage of ambition.

At the identical time, we and the business want a brand new hit recreation greater than ever. More on that under.

Not an Industry Thriving – An Industry Coasting

I believe we are able to all agree that the cellular video games business will not be dwelling as much as its potential.

As mentioned, based on estimates (e.g Newzoo), the market has grown on common by 3% per 12 months within the final 5 years. That’s not an business thriving. It’s an business coasting. I’ve a concept on why that is. But earlier than that, some placing information.

Billy Ren, one in all our market insights specialists, lately analyzed cellular video games launched since 2020. Out of roughly 53,000 video games launched, solely 22 (about .04%!) grossed $1 billion or extra – which is roughly what assembly our ambitions appears to be like like. Here’s what’s placing: 20 of these 22 got here from builders in China, Japan, and South Korea. Only 2 have been developed within the West: Royal Match by Dream Games and Monopoly Go by Scopely.

Why is the West falling behind? Yes, native Chinese builders have a pure benefit on the earth’s greatest market. But we within the West ought to look within the mirror. The reality is, now we have not introduced radical new gameplay innovation to the market – not in the way in which Clash Royale, Pokémon GO, or Brawl Stars every did of their time. Those video games did not simply succeed; they expanded the market by bringing fully new audiences to cellular gaming.

So what’s the business doing as an alternative? Getting superb at optimizing what already exists. A/B testing. Incremental enhancements. Squeezing extra out of confirmed formulation. And to be clear, there’s nothing fallacious with that work. 

The work of enhancing stay video games will not be the issue. In reality, it is important. At Supercell, making our stay video games higher for gamers is equally necessary as creating new ones. Without repeatedly enhancing these video games, we can’t obtain our mission of making video games which might be remembered eternally. Clash Royale’s outcomes final 12 months are a testomony to what’s doable when a crew relentlessly focuses on the participant expertise – an almost decade-old recreation exploding with development as a result of the crew saved discovering new methods to thrill gamers. We’re extremely happy with that work and can hold doing it.

But this is the fact: stay recreation excellence alone would not develop an business. It maintains one. For the market to actually increase, we have to carry new gamers in. People who do not presently play cellular video games. And that requires innovation. New genres. New methods to play. Experiences that make somebody say, “I’ve never seen anything like this before.” That’s what Clash Royale did in 2016. That’s what Pokémon GO did that very same summer time. The business wants extra of these moments.

I’ve seen what occurs when an business stops innovating. Remember the period of these downloadable PC/Mac video games with 60-minute free trials again in 2005? Eventually, the market consolidated round simply three genres: match-3, hidden object, and time administration video games. Endless optimization, minimal innovation. What might have been a large market turned a restricted one. Obviously, we don’t need cellular video games to finish up in the identical place.

What We’re Doing About It

First, we’re placing our cash the place our mouth is. In 2025, we actually doubled our funding in new video games and innovation in comparison with the prior 12 months and this 12 months we’re anticipating to roughly double it once more. While many firms have scaled again, we have moved in the other way. Our robust stay video games efficiency, particularly Clash Royale’s historic 12 months, offers us the power to make these long-term bets. We’re lucky to be on this place, and we intend to make use of it.

Second, we have reorganized Supercell to create the proper situations for each stay video games and new video games to thrive. And whereas I say “right conditions for both”, I additionally imply that these situations are completely different for each.

We employed Sara Bach in 2023 and have now consolidated practically every little thing besides new video games beneath her management. In mid-2025, we introduced on Drussila Hollanda to run all new recreation improvement. These aren’t simply title adjustments. We’ve created genuinely separate organizations, with completely different areas, completely different cultures, and other ways of working. Our objective: let stay recreation groups focus fully on serving right now’s gamers, whereas new recreation groups focus fully on inventing the long run new hit video games that may finally turn out to be stay video games.

Third – and that is the largest shift – we’re attempting to construct one thing that mixes the most effective of startups with the benefits of a longtime firm like ours.

For over two years, I’ve talked about new recreation groups working like startups. Honestly, we solely went partway there. We attracted entrepreneurial founders and gave them independence, however we did not create the total situations that make startups work. That was my failure. Now we’re attempting to repair it.

Here’s what we imagine it takes:

• Entrepreneurial founders with excessive ambition. Great video games do not come from committees or processes. They come from small teams of visionary builders who imagine, possibly irrationally, that they’ll create one thing that adjustments how thousands and thousands of individuals play. We greenlight groups, not recreation ideas, since you merely can’t predict which thought will succeed. But you may determine the individuals who will not cease till they determine it out.

• Tight constraints. This would possibly sound counterintuitive, however I’ve come to imagine that constraints drive innovation. In my time as an entrepreneur and investor, I’ve not often seen nice merchandise emerge from groups with limitless budgets and limitless runways. Too many sources result in unfocused exploration, not inventive breakthroughs. Constraints pressure prioritization. They pressure you to search out intelligent options as an alternative of throwing cash at issues. They create urgency. New recreation groups at Supercell now function inside actual budget-based constraints, not theoretical ones.

• Aligned incentives. If we’re asking founders to take startup-level dangers, they need to share in startup-level upside. New recreation groups at Supercell now take part of their recreation’s earnings in the event that they efficiently launch. We need individuals who would possibly in any other case begin their very own firm to have the ability to do one thing like that right here, with higher odds of reaching gamers at scale.

At the identical time, Supercell gives what no startup can: a launchpad. Our scale, a participant base of round 300 million month-to-month actives, tens of hundreds of creators in our Creator Program, {our relationships} with Apple and Google, our advertising and stay ops experience – these compound an ideal recreation’s possibilities of success. Squad Busters, regardless of its post-launch failure, proved this: 40 million pre-registrations, 75 million downloads in 12 months one. The rocket did not attain orbit, however the launchpad labored.

What we’re constructing is the most effective of each worlds. You construct the rocket ship. We present the launchpad. Together, we maximize the percentages of making one thing that issues.

We Follow People, Not Processes

I need to be clear: what follows is not actually about packages or processes. It’s about the most effective folks and groups. The finest product founders on the earth – whether or not they’re inside Supercell right now or some place else fully. If that is you, we need to discuss, no matter which path makes probably the most sense.

When now we have the proper folks and/or crew, we have carried out no matter we are able to to work along with them to create one thing wonderful. Ultimately that’s all that counts. The course of doesn’t matter.

That mentioned, listed here are among the present methods we’re looking for and help these founders:

• Spark Program: For people who’ve the expertise and drive however have not but discovered their crew, Spark affords one thing distinctive: the possibility to satisfy potential co-founders by way of intense recreation jams and speedy prototyping, pressure-tested with the help of this system. But Spark is not just for people. Complete groups who need to show themselves by way of this course of are equally welcome. We’ve now accomplished a number of cycles, with over dozens of builders going by way of this system and plenty of new recreation groups rising. We’ll proceed operating Spark and studying from it.

• AI Innovation Lab: What began as a Helsinki pilot final spring expanded to San Francisco final fall. This April, we’re operating three concurrent cohorts throughout Helsinki, San Francisco, and Tokyo. The Lab is concentrated on founders exploring fully novel gameplay experiences on the intersection of AI and gaming. We’ve had some genuinely thrilling groups come by way of already, with a number of persevering with to work with Supercell after their cohorts ended.

• Supercell Investments: We proceed investing in exterior studios and groups who share our ambition to create nice video games – ideally video games we would by no means construct ourselves. Different platforms, completely different genres, completely different audiences. As one instance, Channel37’s The Last Caretaker lately crossed 1 million wishlists on Steam. It’s an incredible PC recreation, nothing like what we’ve constructed at Supercell – and that is precisely why we’re excited and proud to help it. 

If none of those paths match however one thing on this publish resonates with you, please attain out anyway. We’re not attempting to funnel everybody by way of a single course of. We’re looking for the proper folks and work out, collectively, the right way to make one thing nice.

An Invitation

I do not know if what we’re constructing will work. We’re an almost 16-year-old firm attempting to recapture the starvation and inventiveness of a startup. That’s not simple. We’ll most likely make errors alongside the way in which.

But I imagine the business wants extra firms keen to attempt. The cellular video games market will not attain its potential by way of optimization alone. Someone must create the subsequent expertise that brings new gamers in. The subsequent second that expands what folks assume cellular video games will be.

Maybe that somebody is at Supercell already. Maybe they’re at one other firm. Maybe they’re engaged on one thing of their house proper now. Wherever they’re, we need to give them the absolute best probability to succeed.

If you are the type of one who’s pushed to construct one thing genuinely new for gamers, and also you’re curious whether or not Supercell is likely to be the proper place to do it, I hope you will attain out. We’re dedicated to pursuing innovation in as some ways as we are able to. We’d be grateful to have you ever be a part of us in attempting.

Financial Year 2025

Finnish legislation requires us to publish our annual financials, and I’m proud to share them.

The outcomes:

• Revenue: $3.01 billion / €2.65 billion

• EBITDA: $1.06 billion / €0.93 billion

• Corporate taxes paid in Finland: €220 million

On the taxes: many people at Supercell benefited from Finland’s free training and healthcare, financed by taxes. We’re proud to contribute again to our society on this manner, and to assist in giving others the identical alternatives we had.

In greenback phrases, we matched our all-time report income from 2024, and grew EBITDA by 12%. In euro phrases, EBITDA grew 6%. No matter the way you measure it, this was an distinctive 12 months. Financially talking, it was top-of-the-line years in Supercell’s historical past.

Clash Royale was the largest contributor to those leads to 2025. But the larger level is that this: zooming out from any single recreation or any single 12 months, Supercell has an extremely robust portfolio. Yes, we have had ups and downs – Brawl Stars and Clash Royale have every had their peaks and valleys. But for those who have a look at the final 5 years on a complete portfolio foundation, we have grown. That’s an immense energy, and it is fully because of our recreation groups and their relentless give attention to gamers. They’re those who make this doable.

Even greater than the monetary outcomes, what I’m most proud about is our tradition and groups. This is even supposing in 2025 alone, we welcomed nearly 300 new Supercellians – our greatest 12 months of development ever when it comes to headcount. To be trustworthy, I used to be fairly nervous about this tempo of development. Would our tradition change for the more serious? This is one thing that I’ve at all times been paranoid about. But I’m completely satisfied to say now that I really feel that our tradition is stronger than ever and now we have the most effective groups now we have ever had.

This will not be one thing that exhibits up within the income numbers, however to me it issues greater than anything and it offers me huge confidence in what Supercell can turn out to be. 

Also, the report profitability talked about above places us in an extremely lucky place. It offers us the power to take larger dangers, to take a position extra aggressively in innovation, to assume in many years somewhat than quarters. While a lot of the business has pulled again, we are able to push ahead. That’s a privilege only a few firms have proper now.

And with that privilege comes accountability.

We did not earn this place alone. Our gamers gave it to us – a whole bunch of thousands and thousands of people that selected to spend their money and time on our video games, 12 months after 12 months. The greater than hundred thousand creators who constructed communities round what we make. The Supercellians who pour themselves into this work day by day.

We owe it to all of them to take advantage of this chance. Not to play it secure. Not to optimize our option to gradual decline. But to take the sorts of dangers that might create one thing actually new for gamers. The sorts of video games that do not exist but however ought to.

That’s what we intend to do.

Looking Ahead

This 12 months, Hay Day and Clash of Clans flip 14. Fourteen years! When we based Supercell in 2010, we dreamed of making video games that might be performed for years and remembered eternally. These video games hitting this milestone – nonetheless rising, nonetheless bringing folks collectively – is proof that eternally video games aren’t only a dream.

Somewhere on the market, somebody has the subsequent thought that may change how thousands and thousands of individuals play. Maybe it is you. If so, you recognize the place to search out us.

To everybody who performed our video games this 12 months, to the tens of hundreds of creators who’re the spine of our neighborhood, and to all Supercellians who make this doable: thanks. I really feel extremely fortunate to be a part of one thing like this.

We’ll all do our greatest to ensure our greatest days are forward of us.

Ilkka