subsidiary industry mobile games founded 2010 ; 6 years ago 2010 1 headquarters helsinki finland key people ilkka paananen ceo 1 products full list revenue 2.11 billion 2 2015 operating income 845 million 2 2015 owner tencent 84.3 % number of employees 180 2 2015 website official website supercell is a mobile game development company founded in june 2010 in helsinki finland . the company s debut game was gunshine.net 2011 . in 2011 supercell started developing games for mobile devices and has since then fully released four mobile games hay day clash of clans boom beach and clash royale which are freemium games and have been very successful for the company the first two generating revenue of 2.5 million a day in 2013 . 3 accel partners invested 13 million in supercell in 2011 4 and in october 2013 it was announced that the japanese company gungho online entertainment and its parent softbank had acquired 51 % of the company for a reported 2.1 billion . 5 on june 1 2015 softbank acquired an additional 22.7 % stake in supercell now owning the 73.2 % of the company and becoming the sole external shareholder . 6 in 2016 supercell reported annual revenues of around 2.11 billion . 2 in three years the company s revenues have grown a total of 800 percent from 78.4 million 2012 . 2 7 8 on june 21 2016 tencent announced a deal to acquire 84.3 % of supercell with usd 8.6 billion . japan s softbank values supercell at 10.2 billion . 9 contents 1 company 1.1 business model 1.2 development of business 1.3 charity 2 history 2.1 background and founding 2.2 change of strategies 2.3 development of clash of clans 3 games 4 marketing 5 acknowledgements 6 notes 7 references 8 external links company edit supercell is part of the giant japanese telecommunications company softbank which owns 73 % of the company . ilkka paananen owns 6 % and mikko kodisoja 5.4 % of the shares . the rest belong to the employees and other founders . originally softbank bought 51 % of the company together with the game company gungho for 1.1 billion euros in 2013 . in the sale all supercell s employees sold the same amount of their shares . one condition for the sale was that the main office would stay in finland . softbank and gungho founded the kahon 3 inc. in finland . its articles of incorporation state that the company will remain finnish . kahon bought supercell and later gungho sold its shares to softbank . in may 2015 softbank finally bought the rest of the investors out of the company and increased its shares to 73 % . at that time the technology magazine venturebeat estimated the value of supercell to be 4.9 billion euros . in march 2016 softbank owned over 75 % of supercell s shares . supercell s main office is located in the former facilities of the nokia research center in helsinki s ruoholahti district . the company has offices also in tokyo beijing san francisco and seoul . business model edit supercell focuses on the development of free to play games that yield profits through the in game micropayments . the company s objective is to focus on the successful games that stay popular for years . the focus has not been on revenue but on the principle just design something great something that users love . 10 game development focuses around cells of five to seven people which start with idea generation and an initial review by ceo paananen . 10 the team subsequently develops the idea into a game which the rest of the company s employees get to play test followed by play testing in canada s itunes app store ; if the canada reception is good the next step is global rollout via itunes . 10 supercell has discontinued a total of 14 game projects it did not deem promising enough citation needed successful failures which are celebrated by employees . 10 one of the games that was cancelled well into development was battle buddies which had also been rated well in the test market but the amount of players was still too small . the final decision for cancelling a project is done by the development team themselves . supercell has only 180 employees which is a relatively small amount compared to its revenue as even the company s biggest rival king has 1 400 employees . supercell also does not have middle management so the organisation is flat . even though the teams have a lot of independence and freedom due to the lack of directors they have a lot of responsibility for their result . new employees are on a four month probation and the turnover rate has been great . development of business edit in march 2012 supercell s revenue on apple s app store was greater than any other developer s. from 2013 to 2015 clarify the revenue increased by 562 % and by 198 % in the next annual period which is why the company s revenue had increased into 1.5 billion euros . in 2014 the company made into the top 50 of finland s largest companies . in 2015 the revenue increased by 36 % and the profits by 60 % and the company also bought shares and options from its employees for 114 million euros . supercell does not use tax shelters and pays all of its taxes to finland . in 2013 the company and its founders paid a combined 260 million as corporate and income taxes which was 0.6 percent of finland s tax revenue that year . in the following year the company paid 150 million in taxes and 176 million euros of corporate taxes in 2015 . charity edit the employees of supercell donated 3.4 million euros to the finnish new children s hospital project . it is presumably the largest charity donation done by company employees in the history of finland . supercell has also given donations to the american charity organisation watsi . the company founders mikko kodisoja and ilkka paananen have founded the me foundation that supports different kinds of charity projects . in november 2015 the me foundation donated 2.5 million euros to the helsinki youth department for the support of young immigrants . supercell also organised a fundraising that collected old computers and tablets from game companies to donate to poor families with children through the finnish tukikummit ry . a registered non profit organisation . supercell was also the biggest individual investor in the finnish game museum s crowdfunding campaign in 2015 . history edit background and founding edit before founding supercell two of the founders mikko kodisoja and ilkka paananen worked at the mobile game company sumea . kodisoja was one of the founders of sumea in 1999 and paananen was hired as the company s ceo in 2000 . in 2003 sumea gained 1.2 million euros of profit . in the following year the american digital chocolate bought sumea and made the company its finnish headquarters and paananen the european manager . with the new owner the business activity increased but at the same time the business culture took a more problematic direction according to kodisoja who was the creative director at the time . he left the company in 2010 and soon after paananen did so as well . 11 at first paananen worked at the financier company lifeline ventures but soon wanted to become an entrepreneur himself . he planned to found a game company where executives would not disturb the work of the game developers . together paananen kodisoja petri styrman lassi leppinen visa forst n and niko derome who had known each other through work connections founded supercell in 2010 . the company started its business in a cramped office in the niittykumpu district of espoo . 12 kodisoja and paananen invested 250 000 euros from their savings from their time at sumea in the company . in addition the finnish funding agency for technology innovation tekes gave them a loan of 400 000 euros . lifeline ventures also became an investor . in the following october supercell raised 750 000 euros through seed funding from for example london venture partners and initial capital . the first game supercell started to develop was the massive multiplayer online game gunshine that could be played on facebook with a browser or on mobile platforms and the game s prototype was ready in eight months . 12 after gunshine s completion accel partners also invested 8 million euros in the company in may 2011 and shareholder kevin comolli became a member of supercell s board of directors . accel has also invested in rovio among others . 13 change of strategies edit in november 2011 supercell abandoned gunshine for three reasons it did not interest players for long enough it was too difficult to play and the mobile version did not work as well as the browser version . at best the game had approximately half a million players . supercell noticed the company could not catch up to the current leader of facebook games the zynga company and decided to focus on ipad games . another facebook game on development was left unfinished as well . the change of direction did not drive away the investors but the pressure to succeed became worse and paananen had to make more detailed reports of progress for the investors . 12 the company simultaneously developed five games and the first one to be released for test market was pets vs orcs . it was not very successful and another concept tower was abandoned soon as well . however in may 2012 hay day was published and was quite promising in the test market . the game eventually became supercell s first internationally released game . 12 hay day was supercell s version of zynga s successful facebook game farmville an easy to play farm simulator . supercell added to their farming simulator the ability to refine products a production chain and touch screen properties . the social aspect of the game was emphasised as well . the optimisation of the production chains had an important role in the game and it could be sped up with in game purchases . the game was published in midsummer 2012 and it became a surprising success to the point the server capacity was not enough to support all players . there were also problems with balancing the game as in the beginning all players had an oversupply of eggs which made the in game market depressed . the company solved the problem by adding more eggs as necessary ingredients in recipes . to avoid similar problems in the future supercell hired a data analyst who monitors the balance in the games . in four months the game became one of the most profitable games in apple s app store in the us and was one of the most profitable in the world for two and a half years . the game receives regular updates and is maintained by a team of 14 people . 14 development of clash of clans edit the employees of supercell had a lot of experience from the video game industry . lasse louhento had started at bloodhouse and lassi leppinen was the chief programmer at sumea and digital chocolate . their team had spent months on a fantasy themed facebook game when supercell changed strategies . leppinen and louhento wanted to make a strategy game that would utilise a touch screen so playing would be as simple and pleasant as possible . the development of clash of clans took six months and the game was released in august 2012 . in three months it became the most profitable app in the us . according to app annie in the years 2013 and 2014