Supercell and Clash of Clans Sold for $8.6 Billion

Supercell, one of the most popular and successful mobile game developers was just bought out for nearly $9 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal. The Chinese internet giant Tencent Holdings and its partners have acquired an 83.4% stake in the company. Here’s what gamers need to know.

A few years back Supercell burst onto the mobile gaming scene with Hay Day and Clash of Clans, which quickly rose to the top of the download charts. At one point reports suggested Supercell was earning roughly $5 million daily from Clash of Clans in-game purchases.

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Since then Supercell has continued to dominate the mobile gaming market with Clash of Clans, Boom Beach and the newest title Clash Royale. All three are extremely popular, lucrative, and filled with in-app purchases. The result is a company being valued at $10.2 billion dollars, which will soon be primarily owned by Tencent Holdings.

The move is just one of many for Tencent, who is already one of the biggest internet giants in China. The company got big with their popular messaging service WeChat, similar to WhatsApp, which reportedly has almost 800 millions daily active users.

In recent years Tencent has continued to purchase large gaming firms in an attempt to corner aspects of the market. Currently Tencent owns Riot, developers of the massively-popular League of Legends, not to mention stake in Gears of War, World of Warcraft and others. They saw huge success with the PC gaming platform, and are now shifting focus to the mobile market, which is expected to dominate sales in the coming years.

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Back in 2015 Tencent Holdings bought a minority stake in Glu Mobile, a popular mobile game developer, but are now taking a much bigger step and adding a global footprint to their mobile plans with Supercell.

Currently Supercell’s games like Clash of Clans, Clash Royale, Boom Beach and others are extremely popular, at the top of the charts, and available around the globe on both Android and iOS. Making this a huge acquisition that will bolster their gaming initiative on all fronts.

For those worried about how this will affect popular and loved games like Clash of Clans and Clash Royale, it shouldn’t. According to reports, Tencent stated that Supercell’s current management team will retain full independence to develop, update and create some of the best games on the market.

Essentially the Finnish game studio Supercell will no longer be co-owned by SoftBank, which acquired part of the company a few years ago. Now, a majority stake will be held by Tencent, which will reportedly be finalized sometime in Q3 of 2016, after regulatory approvals.

For now nothing will change at Supercell and in their popular games. The developers will continue their work in Finland, updating and adding new content to their hit mobile games, developing new and exciting titles, and doing what they do best. We could see changes sometime in 2017, but that’s doubtful. Supercell has been amazingly successful, and there should be no reason to mess with a winning formula.