Finnish video-game maker Supercell plans to double its spending on new-product development for the second straight year, with its chief executive officer saying the slow-growing industry needs to innovate more.
The maker of Clash Royale and Brawl Stars will earmark a nine-figure sum for game development this year after doubling its development budget in 2025, chief executive officer Ilkka Paananen said in an interview and blog post.
The spending by the company, which is majority-owned by Tencent Holdings Ltd, comes against the backdrop of a sluggish climate for the mobile-games industry, where sales have grown just 3% annually for the past five years, according to researcher Newzoo.
"I think we can all agree that the mobile-games industry is not living up to its potential,” Paananen said. "That’s not an industry thriving. It’s an industry coasting.”
Supercell’s CEO blames a lack of innovation. To create new hits, he has increased staff by 30% to 900 employees. Paananen aims to operate Supercell more like a startup, with about 15 games in development. At any moment, projects could get killed in favor of more promising ones. Four games are in a more final state, he said.
Supercell’s sales last year came to US$3.01bil (RM11.81bil), while the company earned US$1.06bil (RM4.16bil) before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation, according to the post. Paananen said the results were "near record” and "virtually matched our 2024 results”.
Clash Royale, released in 2016, remains Supercell’s main money-maker. The free-to-play game combines real-time strategy with tower defences, troop building and collectible elements.
Like other game companies, Supercell’s newer titles haven’t made big splashes. In 2025, the company killed Squad Busters, pulling the plug on a game for the first time despite generating revenue of more than US$100mil (RM392.50mil) in the first seven months.
"The game didn’t work with a large enough group of players,” Paananen wrote on the blog.
Mobile gaming was long hailed the fastest-growing arm of the US$197bil (RM773.22bil) games industry. But since a boom in 2022, growth has slowed. Just 22 of the 53,000 mobile games released since 2020 grossed US$1bil (RM3.92bil), according to data from Supercell. – Bloomberg
