Supercell’s First Flop? Squad Busters Still Busting

[Music] Let's keep going because Phil wants to take a shot at Supercell.
It's not Mishka.
Mishko wants me to take a
Exact. No, no, no, no, no. You took a shot and I want to I want to understand where this is coming from because I open up LinkedIn, he tags me to this goddamn assault. So, the main points that Phil has are good. There's two main points. It's been two years since the game Squadbusters launched and not only have the metrics not improved despite few overhauls, but they've actually worsened and it's clear from the graph. And he says that Supercell needs to grow Squadbuster before it becomes something far more costly, which is a resource vampire referencing to the many games in development and the many games that they have live. So understandable notes, but then I'm going to add few quotes from this LinkedIn post. Quote one, Squadbusters is Supercell's first flop,

revealing that they failed at the IPO test. Quote two, corporatism seems to have fully embraced Supercell. Mind you, the CEO of Supercell is tagged also in this post. Quote three, what was one of Supercell's greatest strengths, moving on from projects, will now become one of its greatest weaknesses. Quote four, Moco, which has had one of the most underwhelming, confusing, and bamboozling launches, second only to Squadbusters. And last, quote, the North American studio appears to have still produced Jack Squad, and Supercell X has embraced Area 51 branding. Nothing goes in or out. What the [ __ ] fell?
Well, there were some positive there's some positive things in there that I applauded them for taking the risk of these launches.
You know, I've been debating going and doing, you know, there was the Squadbusters post, there was the Squadbusters one month later and you know, I've been I was debating a Squadbusters one year later and the ultimate reality is just no one cares.

And when I was writing the one month later post, you know, we said down but not out and I think we can finally say down and out. But the thing I raised when we did that one month later was that I was very concerned that as Supercell started to grow and become more corporate and all of the corporate politics started to enter the company that this would become a resource vampire and they would struggle to move on from it. Right? We talked about the game deaths which aren't really game deaths. The champagne popping. I was thinking about how much all this really really seems to bother me. And it really seems to bother me because there's two pieces. There's Squadbusters piece and I think there's the broader Supercell piece. But Supercell is a shining city on a hill for all of us, right? And we always talk about they don't they don't owe us jack [ __ ] But the reality is is that they are trying to IPO. It's very obvious they're trying to IPO and they've pivoted this company. The Supercell is dead. There is no more Supercells. That whole concept is fried. And what I keep waiting for Ilka to put in his letter for him to embrace is what this new Supercell is going to look like. This is where Supercell needs

leadership the most, right? This is where they need someone to tighten the ship and to make tough choices in a corporation because here's the reality, right? Squadbusters got shipped to the London team. And they always used to talk about that game teams themselves kill games. But now that you're in a corporation, there's all these politics. They're not quite sure, you know, if we choose to kill this game, where do we go? Do we get laid off? All those things are very real reality checks that Supercell is now going to have to deal with. And they need to kill squadbusters to set the tone that like this is what happens. Sometimes games don't succeed and we need to move on from them. Ilka's letter was talking about we're not taking enough risks launching stuff. We're not doing new stuff, you know, in terms of how we launch Squadbusters, how we launch Moco. And again, I I I'm so with him on this. Like I really applaud them for making these efforts. But now the risk is you need to be able to move on from these things. And what happens is that weakness hides in numbers. And this is a great example of it. You're two years into this game. You're two years into this game. You've done multiple game overhauls and the KPIs have worsened. The deer has been shot and is wounded and someone needs to put

it out of its misery because Squadbusters doesn't deserve this. It doesn't deserve this. It deserves to die an honorable death and now it's just like bleeding and bleeding and bleeding. And I can imagine if you're a person on that team, you're looking at those dashboards. You're looking at the fact that this is.1% of Supercell's portfolio and you're starting to have uncertainty about what the future looks like. And so they need to be able to kill this thing and move on. And ultimately, Ilka needs I would argue to step up and not become the world's least powerful CEO, but to figure out how corporatism is going to work in scoping. And corporatism is a bad word, but it's the reality of scaling. It's the reality of trying to get these things in a place where you can have Clash Rail make a bajillion dollars. And so, I'm just hoping for more leadership and more reality checks about where they are and what they need to do to get to the next step. It's just been really disappointing. North America, what the [ __ ] is going on over there? Like it's been 10 years. What is Go Super? What? Like I mean again, they don't owe us anything, but these things are hiding on the P&L. And if you want to make games that are remembered forever, go do that. Swatbusters is not

going to be remembered forever. And take it from your number one fan. Take it from the guy who thought this had the biggest potential in terms of downloads at all. It's time to put this thing to rest. It deserves an honorable death. Give it that honorable death. And now you have to answer the tough questions, right? What are you going to do with this London team? Are they going to be laid off? Are they going to move to other teams? Those are tough questions and a CEO needs to answer that, not anyone else. A CEO.
My god, thank you, Braveheart. I felt like like the Braveheart music needs to be playing behind you during that speech. I don't think I've ever heard Phil so impassion.
I It's just they're so important to all of us and I'm just so frustrated that they they seem to have their blinders on when it comes to some of this stuff. It's time to step up. If you're serious about building games that are remembered forever, if you're serious about IPOing, like put on your big boy pants and let's go. Let's get this done and let's make hard choices and it's going to be a series of hard choices for Super get to IPO because remember Brawl Stars is down again, right? And the saving grace is that Clash Royale is up, but the portfolio is not looking good. You don't

want to IPO with two duds. You want to be growing. You want
Last game that you shipped, last game that you shipped big was 2018. Yes. But hey, you're opening up AI labs in every sitting
and boy.
And also they use word layoff. It's called sparked now. So you get sparked.
Oh boy. Basically rebranding.
No, no, I'm just kidding. Basically like you get it. A lot of new people go into this
new game development which is in a different building often and that's where you spark it out.
Either you succeed or you move out.
Well, I think we should wrap it here. I will not see you next week. I'll see you in like three or four weeks. The guys will see you next week.
All right.
We will run the show to the ground.
Jen.
Yeah.
Thank you.
You're going to come back. You're going to be all about attribution. I'm looking forward. It's going to be like a beautiful mind moment. You're going to see all the numbers. It's going to all make sense now. Direct response advertising.
They're going to like take like tech and like implant it right here. And then I'm going to plug into the matrix and then

I'm going to start talking like Phil and say attribution. And yeah, it'll be it'll be awesome. They start start posting and fire speeches on LinkedIn.
All right, goodbye everybody.
Just become Phil. All right, bye guys. [Music]