Clash of Clans maker Supercell made $892m from two mobile games in 2013

Finnish games firm Supercell has published its financial results for 2013, revealing that its two mobile games, Clash of Clans and Hay Day, generated $892m of revenues last year.

That’s up from $101m in 2012 – both games launched in the summer of that year – with the company’s earnings before interest, tax and amortisation rising from $51m in 2012 to $464m in 2013.

Supercell had 132 staff at the end of 2013 according to the Wall Street Journal, which picked up on the financial results. That’s a startling $6.75m of revenues per employee for the company, which started life making Facebook games before pivoting to focus on tablets and smartphones.

Together, Clash of Clans and Hay Day averaged $2.44m of daily revenues in 2013, although that figure is likely much higher now. This week, a hacker gained access to Supercell’s internal systems, and published screenshots suggesting that on 7 February 2014 alone, the developer pulled in $5.15m of revenue.

Supercell has been testing its third game, Boom Beach, in a few countries for several months, but the Wall Street Journal claims it will launch commercially in March on Apple’s iOS, with Android to follow, in a similar release pattern to the previous games.

Mobile analytics firm Distimo estimates that Clash of Clans was the world’s most lucrative iOS game in 2013, with Hay Day in third place behind rival King’s Candy Crush Saga. Supercell’s two games also featured high in Apple’s end-of-2013 top grossing charts on its App Store.

2013 was quite a year for Supercell, beyond the performance of its games. In April, the company raised $130m of venture capital funding valuing it at $770m, but six months later, two Japanese companies – telco SoftBank and games publisher GungHo Online – made a strategic investment of $1.5bn in Supercell to help fuel its growth.

“Our growth speaks a lot about the platform that we’re on, and how quickly games can spread organically,” chief executive Ilkka Paananen told The Guardian in July 2013, while laying out Supercell’s plans for global expansion.

“If you think five years ahead about what the most valuable games companies will look like, they’ll need to have a strong foothold not only in the Western markets, but in one or two of the big Asian markets: Japan, Korea and China,” said Paananen.

“One of our goals is to create the first fully-global games company, which has players both in the West and in the big Asian markets. We still have a very long way to go, but the signs have been very promising.”