Ilkka Paananen TLDR: 9 things I learned from the Supercell CEO’s rollercoaster year-end recap

Supercell’s super CEO Ilkka Paananen just released a 2,500 word blog post on how the iconic mobile gaming publisher hit over 300 million monthly active players for the first time, how all of its games grew in revenue for the first time since 2014, how it hit record gross revenue, how the 5-year-old game Brawl Stars “doubled, tripled, quadrupled (and more) its metrics,” and how the new game Supercell launched, Squad Busters, was a disappointment despite hitting $100M in 7-month revenue and winning the Apple Game of the Year Award.

It’s amazing, wonderful, and insightful, and I recommend you go read it in full.

Of course, it is 2,500 words.

In case you don’t have 20 minutes to read it all, here’s what stood out for me …

1. Supercell had it’s best year ever … at 15 years old

Supercell had its best year ever, Paananen said:

• 300M monthly actives
• All games grew revenue
• Record year for gross revenue ($3 billion)
• A 5-year-old game blew up bigtime

Obviously Supercell has great games, some of the best people in the industry, and did a bunch of things right, but also, the broader games environment was pretty buoyant. We saw that last part too: our strategic customers ad spend jumped 41% in late 2024. That typically only happens when the overall market is up and to the right.

And that’s encouraging news for everyone.

It’s also encouraging that a 15-year-old mobile games publisher is still growing.

2. A 5-year-old game exploded

Paananen says that Brawl Stars’ performance in 2024 was historic:

“I have worked in games for 25+ years and I have never seen a game, so many years into its life, grow like this. Brawl Stars doubled, tripled, quadrupled (and more) its metrics, especially players, engagement, and revenue.”

When launched, games either die young (the most probable outcome), limp along in maintenance mode, or grow big. But eventually the ones that grow big slow down, level off, and being a long slow fall.

They don’t usually grow explosively years after launch. But Brawl Stars did.

3. LiveOps is a difference-maker

The first mobile games were kinda set-and-forget … launch and let them go, updating via an app upgrade and redownload when necessary or desired. LiveOps changed the scene with in-game events, content updates, offers, community engagement, optimizations, and more, all live.

That’s what made Brawl Stars grow so much in 2024.

Supercell added people to its LiveOps teams, letting them build and ship more. Instead of just working on 2-3 big ideas every update, they could ship dozens of smaller things, each of which was more likely to succeed.

From team lead Frank Keienburg:

“Essentially it’s about a better balance for risk taking. Predictability in outcomes vs. potential (and risk) of big ideas. The team is fearless today, but not reckless.”

Impressive!

4. Supercell is playing the “forever game”

This year is Supercell’s 15th anniversary. That’s probably 5X the lifespan of most mobile game studios, and they’re doing it in style with multiple billion-dollar games.

That’s amazing.

“While these wins are amazing and matter a lot, we are playing the forever game and need to keep continuously exceeding our players’ expectations,” says Paananen.

In other words it’s not just about quick exit or a flash in the pan. It’s about being player-obsessed, humble, and still ambitious.

5. $100 million is failure (!!!)

Perhaps nothing underscores the fact that Supercell is not your average gaming studio when you read Paananen say that a game that grossed $100 million in 7 months is a disappointment.

After 5 years of not launching a game and 500 days of beta and almost getting killed, Supercell launched Squad Busters. 

“Our first new game launch in over 5 years, Squad Busters, despite generating gross revenues in excess of 100 million dollars during its first 7 months in 2024 and winning the Apple Game of the Year Award, has not yet scaled up to the game team’s (or Supercell’s) aspirations – a disappointing, but energizing truth,” says Paananen.

From the outside it’s hard to tell what Supercell’s costs were in development and what its ongoing costs are for marketing, ongoing development, and LiveOps, but clearly the math isn’t mathing in Supercell’s favor just yet.

For most studios, though, $100 million in 7 months is a dream come true. 

6. Launching new games is hard, even for Supercell

As Paananen states, more than 60% of play time is spent on old games: 6 years or older. New games are less than 10% of play time.

“Mobile games is one of the most competitive industries worldwide. It is very hard to break through with a new game,” he says.

In fact, harder than ever, he adds. So hard that some studios have just given up on making new games, and will only buy one that has already been released and achieved some level of traction.

Even good early metrics in a large public beta or soft launch — Supercell had 120,000 players in Squad Busters before its official launch — can’t tell you everything you need to know about how successful it will or won’t be.

7. There’s nothing like listening to your users for getting better

Like, literally nothing.

We heard that from Hannah Parvaz in a Growth Masterminds episode about rocking the cold start: getting your first million users. You must, must, must listen to your users.

And yeah, it’s even important if you’re Supercell and can get over 100,000 players for a beta game.

“While we succeeded in getting a huge audience interested in the game, the audience mix ended up being quite different to what we originally had imagined,” says Eino Joas, who led the Squad Busters launch. “Trying to make a game that appeals to everyone ended up it not being perfect for anyone.”

Knowing your target audience is insanely important. Joas is digging into the Squad Busters userbase now to inform ongoing development for the future.

8. Success in mobile gaming is an art, not a science

There’s a lot of science involved, absolutely. But ultimately, success in mobile gaming is an art. And it’s unpredictable by nature.

“I don’t believe there is a reliable, scientific recipe for creating new games or launching them,” says Paananen.

You just gotta try stuff. And take risks.

And then rinse and repeat.

If you’re good, and if you’re lucky, something will spark an explosion and you’ll find the magic pixie dust of the internet that leads to great growth. And then you can science that growth … with a lot of art too.

9. The experts are not the experts

Paananen talks about a core memory: showing Hay Day and Clash of Clans to video game developers and leaders way back in early 2012. 

Their reaction was … underwhelming.

“Roughly speaking, their reaction was ‘why would anyone play that?’ ‘Are these even real games?’, they would add. They didn’t believe in a very different experience on a very different platform. They couldn’t see it,” he says.

Both are obviously billion-dollar games. 

Hay Day had over $2 billion in lifetime revenue back in 2023. And Clash of Clans is 1 of the most successful games ever made, with over $10 billion in revenue. Note: that’s not 1 of the most successful mobile games ever made. It’s 1 of the most successful games in general.

That means the experts are not the experts. Users are. Players are. Players will tell you when they like something, and they do that by playing … and buying.

The question Paananen asks himself now is: are we the unbelievers now?

Yeah, you should go read it all

There’s a lot in Paananen’s full post. And there are few in the mobile games space who can speak more authoritatively or with better insight. I recommend you invest the 20 minutes.

Check it out and learn!