Conflict Royale delivered its third-best month ever with $78m in income a 10x improve from early 2023.
It has been seven years since Supercell’s final main new hit.
Rivals resembling Rivergame, Century Video games, and Microfun proceed scaling via centered style methods and aggressive UA.
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Jakub Remiar is a product and sport design marketing consultant.
Conflict Royale simply had its third-best month in its nine-year historical past, with $78 million in internet income.
In comparison with its lowest degree in February 2023, which was $8.3m, it is mainly a 10x improve. It’s presently doing greater than 55% of the entire month-to-month portfolio income making it once more the Supercell’s greatest sport after eight years!
It’s greater than 3x Brawl Stars’ month-to-month income so it appears Supercell pulled one other “10x the income of an previous sport” trick out of its sleeve.
Let us take a look at the final two years of what really occurred:
▪️ In June of 2023, they launched Card Evolutions, basically doubling the day by day income from $250k to $500k. This can be a qualitative improve to some models. Extra models are getting these with each replace. Principally, recycling their entire unit assortment for extra totally different models created from previous ones. Very good and environment friendly transfer from a manufacturing standpoint.
▪️ Then, in March 2024, they launched Fortunate Drops, an analogue system of Star Chest from Brawl Stars, which was used in the course of the “to the moon” part of its scaling. However you’ll simply get 2 Fortunate drops from day by day quests, so it is not that impactful on economic system but, as you see on the chart above, this was nonetheless extra of a testing interval.
Though Supercell depends totally on its military of influencers, typical UA additionally appears to be closely operating right here, which is certainly not low-cost.
▪️ Then comes the crucial replace one 12 months later, throughout March 2025, which eliminated the signature timed chests characteristic from the sport and added 4 Fortunate Drops day by day as a substitute. BUT, in addition they closely nerfed the economic system, giving a lot much less assets to gamers, no extra season store, no extra gem affords, no extra day by day quests. That is the actual perpetrator behind this. After which comes the rocket increase of the sport, making it now $2m a day as a substitute of $ 500k a day.
▪️ Additionally they added Merge Techniques on June thirtieth, which is a streamlined model of their killed auto chess sport Conflict Mini. It is nice that it feeds the very same Cross Royale development and also you get to play with the very same heroes as in the primary sport, however as you see, this was not the killer characteristic. It was economic system rebalance and the gacha system of Fortunate Drops.
▪️ Final month even Fortunate Drops have been eliminated and as a substitute there are Fortunate chests now and 4 sorts of them. Frequent, Magic, Haunted and Phantom. What does this imply in sensible phrases? This continues the paradigm of giving out even much less day by day free assets, as getting these five-star drops with the opportunity of dropping full evolution playing cards is now not likely going to occur, until you open 5000 chests to interrupt via the 0,02% likelihood.
To the moon
It took Brawl Stars 9 months to peak, throughout its “going to the moon” part, when it greater than 10x’d the income from $8m a month to $90m and from that time it has been declining for the final 17 months.
Conflict Royale is already in month 9 of the “to the Moon” part and it appears it has additionally peaked following an identical sample on each income and downloads curves. Though Supercell depends totally on its military of influencers, typical UA additionally appears to be closely operating right here, which is certainly not low-cost.
Does this imply that Conflict Royale will solely decline from this level? Most likely, although will probably be a really profitable decline, nonetheless making dozens of thousands and thousands monthly, however a decline however. And that is the half the place the long-term outlook begins to look fairly grim for the Finnish cell juggernaut. After seven years, Brawl Stars remains to be their final profitable “youngest, billion a 12 months” sport within the portfolio.
After its world launch in 2018, there have been 9 different soft-launched or publicly introduced video games, which have been all killed. The streak continues with Squad Busters’ demise on the finish of final month. So this leaves us with three extra publicly recognized initiatives on the desk, however I’m certain there are various extra in improvement simply unannounced.
Mo.co, a PvE-based motion RPG, which had the strangest world launch in March this 12 months, in comparison with the Hollywood-style fanfare of Squad Busters. The workforce already needed to make clear that the sport just isn’t following Squad Busters’ destiny but. Trying on the income numbers and downloads, this nonetheless looks as if a protracted mushy launch, because the challenge introduced a significant revamp slated for Q1 2026.
These latest video games are a mirrored image of Supercell’s signature technique of being very artistic, tackling new genres and perfecting mainstream ideas for cell.
Venture R.I.S.E., one other salvage operation just like Merge Techniques, constructed from the ashes of Conflict Heroes, already had just a few pre-alphas, however given its characteristic set, it’s nonetheless very early in improvement.
Boat Sport is in its second alpha take a look at on the time of this text. It’s a third-person multiplayer shooter with naval fight, however once more, as it’s an alpha take a look at, it’s nonetheless in its early levels of improvement.
New video games technique
These latest video games are a mirrored image of Supercell’s signature technique of being very artistic, tackling new genres and perfecting mainstream ideas for cell. However this has not produced a success for the final seven years and we additionally shouldn’t overlook that Conflict of Clans was an iteration on Yard Monsters and Hay Day was an iteration on FarmVille.
Is their present technique nonetheless viable in 2025? As we see the onslaught of rising Chinese language firms doubling down on their core style focus and scaling their video games via very aggressive UA techniques, this looks as if an outdated setup.
As seen on the Rivergame’s portfolio of recent video games, all are 4X. And although they launched three new video games in 2024 and none of them produced a billion alone, collectively they’re already previous that billion, and all of them are nonetheless scaling up.
Simply the cell month-to-month income we see within the west is now almost $250m for October 2025. An identical image could be seen in Century Video games’ portfolio, which has produced this 12 months’s greatest new sport by income, Kingshot, which made $80m final month.
Once more, one other comparable graph could be seen on Microfun’s portfolio, which has actually taken over the merge-2 style. Nonetheless soft-launching a number of video games final 12 months, and all of them are nonetheless scaling up. All of those firms have very comparable product methods.
Excellent and advance your style, work in templates, which provides them unimaginable manufacturing pace and grasp one of the best advert creatives for the largest scale by any means vital, even to the purpose that they’ve now constructed an additional totally fledged onboarding sport to offset the mismatch of faux advert creatives.
Deep down, I hoped that Supercell would, in some unspecified time in the future, enter the 4X style with their Conflict IP, however now I’m not even certain how that might work with out the aggressive UA technique that’s obligatory for all the highest 4X video games. If Conflict Royale begins to say no and there doesn’t appear to be any new “saviour” on the closest horizon, there may be not a lot development forward.
I can’t think about Supercell will be capable to pull one thing like Kingshot anytime quickly. Whether or not we prefer it or not, that is the present state of the cell video games market and Supercell might want to radically regulate to it will definitely or threat being pushed to the sidelines.
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