Supercell CEO thrives on trusting the instincts of game developers

Supercell CEO Ilkka Paananen has had some spectacular successes in mobile games since starting the Helsinki company in 2010. His team of 240 people has created games such as Hay Day, Clash of Clans, Boom Beach, Clash Royale, and Brawl Stars, the most recent collection to its stable.

A year ago, the company said it had 100 million people play its games in a day. And in 2017, the company generated $810 million in profit on revenues of $2 billion. Creating that kind of value explains why the Chinese social networking and gaming giant Tencent led a consortium in 2016 to acquire the bulk of Supercell at a $10.2 billion valuation.

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Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.