5 takeaways from Supercell CEO’s Blog Post

I don’t think there’s many people in gaming who doesn’t look forward to reading Supercell’s CEO Illka Paananen yearly blog post that addresses the industry.

If you haven’t already read it I suggest you check out the article and look over it, but if you want my key 5 takeaways and highlights it would be:

• Brawl Stars’ Remarkable Surge: Over five years post-launch, Brawl Stars achieved unprecedented growth, with metrics such as player count, engagement, and revenue increasing multiple times over. To go from $10-20m a month to $70m+ is one of the biggest success stories I’ve ever seen in mobile, another key indication of the importance of live ops in todays games.

• Squad Busters’ Introduction: Supercell released Squad Busters, its first new game in over five years, which generated over $100 million in gross revenue during its first seven months and won the Apple Game of the Year Award. However, it has not yet met the company’s scaling aspirations. Overall the game didint deliver but they’ll keep working on it until it does.

• Record-Breaking Year: In 2024, Supercell’s live games collectively surpassed 300 million monthly active players worldwide. Notably, for the first time since 2014, all of the company’s games experienced revenue growth compared to the previous year, leading to a record year in terms of gross revenue.

• Financial Milestones: Supercell reported record underlying revenues of €2.8 billion in 2024, marking a 77% increase from the previous year. Additionally, the company achieved its second-highest annual earnings with EBITDA of €876 million, up 76% from 2023.

• Industry Perspective: CEO Ilkka Paananen emphasized the importance of innovation and taking risks to create lasting games, criticizing competitors for prioritizing acquisitions over new game development. He highlighted the challenges in developing new games and the industry’s reliance on acquiring successful titles rather than creating them. On a personal level I understand this point but believe that M&A is part of our industry and is a good tool to inject growth in large studios.

All in all, a lot of good positive things from Supercell and let’s hope the rest of us can see some similar success soon.