Clash Royale Creators Sell For Big Hay Pay Day

SuperCell Bought By Chinese Holding Company

I read up on this little buy yesterday. Chinese holding company Tencent is going to buy SuperCell — creators of Clash of Clans, Clash Royale, Hay Day, and Boom beach — for $8.6 Billion now with the ultimate price tag on SuperCell being around $10B.

I’ve read some kerfuffle over the buy and people being scared that it means big changes are going to come and the game is going to be ruined, etc. I don’t know about that. This is the same company that purchased Riot Games (creators of League of Legends) back in December of last year. Tencent hasn’t touched them since. They seem to be in the business of buying companies that run themselves well and then sitting back to make money. Smart choice if you’re buying companies like SuperCell and Riot Games.

Clash Royale is still going very strong. I still play daily and I’m up to 1900 trophies now. I feel fairly confident in my play style. I think my card levels are holding me back, along with having no legendaries and going against some people with 2-3 of them. I haven’t spent a dime though, so I haven’t contributed at all to SuperCell’s cash reserves. They’ve done a great job of making Clash Royale good enough to keep playing as a freebie.

The value of a company with 4 games that are truly quite simple is astounding. It speaks to the market of handheld/mobile gaming, value of F2P done well, and simply making great games.

  • The 10b number is the really crazy part when you consider they basically have 4 games out, all mobile. And while they do promote their games, they don’t go insane to drive interest, its more or less organic based on solid design. In a lot of ways they are Old Blizzard, where the core ideas behind the games aren’t totally new, but the execution and polish are second to none, and on top of that they go above and beyond in supporting the games (all for ‘free’ too).

  • Agreed, but I will say they run commercials for Hay Day all the dang time. Even ran some during the Super Bowl. How do I know this? My mom is addicted to Hay Day. I think she’s one of their top players. I don’t know whether to be proud or… yeah.

  • I liked your last two posts. A few random thoughts too.

    -I’m willing to admit that phone based gaming is the future of gaming, I guess until VR takes over. PC gaming is way more immersive but we love our phones. Frankly I’m nearly 100% web searching on my phone now and PC is hardly ever booted up. Just too much work. VR that works great could make it worth it again.

    -Size matters a lot in marketing, and thank god I’m not trying to make a small physician practice seem like the stars of medicine on the Internet or anywhere else, when it’s clearly not true. Which leads me to my next point.

    -Ethical marketing doesn’t make not true things sound true, it spins what is true in the best light possible. A little like a lawyer really. It thinks of the flaws people will attack and brings them up first and clarifies why they are not flaws.