Supercell, the developers behind Clash Royale, Boom Beach and Clash of Clans, has been purchased by Tencent Holdings Ltd. for $8.6 billion. You may not have heard of Tencent, but the holdings company is also the owner of Riot Games, the developers behind League of Legends, and Glu Mobile, which created mobile games including Kim Kardashian: Hollywood and Katy Perry Pop.
Tencent is a humongous player in the gaming and internet scene. How big you ask? Well, the China-based investment company also owns a portion of Activision Blizzard — roughly 12 percent — as well as a minority stake in Epic Games, the developers behind Unreal, Gears of War and Infinity Blade . Tencent also has a minority stake in Robot Entertainment, which develops the Orcs Must Die! series, and has the rights to stream NBA and HBO content in China.
Riot Games flourished underneath Tencent ownership and according to the blog post written by the founder of Supercell, the Finnish game studio has hopes it will be the same for them.
“Tencent's people seem to love games as much as we do. In fact, in one of my meetings with Martin (their President), he had just dropped out from Clash Royale global top-100 players, and it was almost impossible to get his focus back to the topics we had to discuss… talk about being passionate about games!” wrote Ilkka Paananen, CEO & Supercell cofounder, in a blog post. “On a more serious note, Tencent has built a hugely successful partnership with Riot Games, a team we greatly admire and that has inspired us over the years in so many ways. Now we'll have an excuse to call Riot and talk shop more often!”
This deal, which still lets Supercell remain privately held by its employees, now puts Supercell at an equity value of $10.2 billion dollars.
