In his annual ‘Ilkka's Long Text’, CEO Ilkka Paananen not only provided insight into Supercell's business development in 2025. He also addressed the challenges of a stagnating mobile market, shared lessons learned and promised further investments in external studios.
Despite a few setbacks, 2025 was a truly successful year for Supercell. Revenue amounted to $3.01 billion, or around €2.65 billion, while EBITDA stood at $1.06 billion, or around €930 million. Supercell thus once again achieved its record revenue from 2024 on a dollar basis and increased EBITA by 12% on a dollar basis and 6% on a euro basis. Supercell also paid £200 million in corporate taxes in Finland. These are the economic facts published by Supercell's CEO in his annual ‘Ilkka's Long Text’, partly because Finnish law requires the publication of annual financials.
But as usual, Paananen does not limit his blog post to pure financial data, no matter how interesting it may be. He uses his annual appearance – in 2025, there was a second open letter on the topic of DSA/DMA due to current events – to discuss the market and its development. And, as always, he does not mince his words.
Paananen refers to market data such as that from Newzoo, which shows that the market has only grown by an average of 3% over the past five years. ‘That's not an industry thriving. It's an industry coasting,’ writes Paananen. Billy Ren, one of Supercell's market specialists, analysed that of the approximately 53,000 mobile games launched since 2020, only 22 – or 0.04% – have generated more than a billion dollars in revenue. Twenty of the 22 games came from developers in China, Japan or South Korea. Only two games were created in the West: Royal Match by Dream Games and Monopoly Go by Scopely.
The Supercell CEO particularly laments the lack of innovation: “The fact is, we have not brought radical new gameplay innovation to the market – not in the way Clash Royale, Pokémon GO, or Brawl Stars each did in their time. Those games didn't just succeed; they expanded the market by bringing entirely new audiences to mobile gaming,” he wrote.
That's not an industry thriving. It's an industry coasting
According to Paananen, Supercell has responded to this challenge with some measures. Firstly, the Finnish company is investing money. By 2025, it will have doubled its investment in games and innovation. Thanks to the outstanding performance of its live games, and Clash Royale in particular, it is in a position to do so and intends to take advantage of this position.
Secondly, Supercell has been reorganised to create the right conditions for both live games and new games to thrive. According to Paananen, two separate organisations were essentially created, each with different cultures and, of course, different management teams. Under Sara Bach, who has been with Supercell since 2023, almost everything except the new games division was brought together. In mid-2025, Drussilla Hollanda joined the company to head up the new game development division.
Last but not least, Supercell wants to create an environment that combines the best of start-ups with the advantages of an established company. The Supercell CEO is quite self-critical in this regard. “We attracted entrepreneurial founders and gave them independence, but we didn't create the full conditions that make startups work. That was my failure. Now we're trying to fix it,” he says.
Among other things, Supercell wants to focus more on the people involved when selecting new projects. They greenlight teams, not game concepts. In addition, they will work with real budgets, as in his experience, constraints drive innovation. Constraints force prioritisation. This forces people to find clever solutions instead of throwing money at problems. And they want people to share in the success of their new game.
In this context, Paananen mentions the various programmes that Supercell has in place to support external and internal talent, including the Spark programme and Supercell Investments. In this context, he announced that Supercell intends to continue investing in external studios, preferably those working on games that Supercell itself would not make. The focus is on different platforms, different genres and different target groups.
“If none of these paths fit but something in this post resonates with you, please reach out anyway,” Ilkka Paaninen writes. “We're not trying to funnel everyone through a single process. We're trying to find the right people and figure out, together, how to make something great.”
