Supercell Completes Full Metacore Acquisition as Studio Restructures

Finland-based mobile games company Supercell, a subsidiary of China-based tech giant Tencent (SEHK: 700), announced its plan to fully acquire Finland-based mobile games developer Metacore and integrate Merge Mansion into its live games portfolio. Supercell was already Metacore’s largest shareholder. Concurrent with the deal, Metacore initiated organizational restructuring that could result in up to 160 job reductions in Finland, with its operations in Germany and Sweden also under review.

Supercell’s path to full ownership of Metacore spans eight years of progressive financing. In 2018, Supercell made an initial equity investment of $5.7m (€5m) in the studio, then operating under the name Everywear Games. In Sep’20, at the time of Metacore’s rebranding and the global launch of Merge Mansion, Supercell provided a further ~$29.6m (€25m) in financing, structured as a $17.8m equity investment and an $11.8m credit line. In May’21, with the game’s daily player base exceeding 800,000 and annualized revenue approaching $50m, Supercell extended a $180m (€150m) credit line to fund the game’s global scaling. Total committed capital across equity and debt exceeded $200m before the full acquisition.

The move to complete ownership reflects Supercell’s broader live-games strategy: the company reported revenue of $3.01B (€2.65B) in 2025, matching its 2024 record, with EBITDA reaching $1.06B (€0.93B), up 12% year-over-year, and its portfolio maintaining ~300 million MAUs globally. Running the farming sim Hay Day, base-building strategy Clash of Clans, card battler Clash Royale, hero shooter Brawl Stars, and base-raid strategy Boom Beach as long-running evergreen titles, Supercell is adding Merge Mansion as a sixth live game to the same operational framework. As Supercell CEO Ilkka Paananen said, “With Supercell’s experience turning around and scaling global live games, alongside our capabilities in live operations and user acquisition, we can help it climb back to the top of its category.”

Founded in 2014 as Everywear Games, initially developing games for the Apple Watch, Metacore pivoted to mobile game development in 2018 and rebranded in 2020 alongside the global release of Merge Mansion, the title that established the merge-2 genre. The game has since reached 60 million players worldwide and generated $700m in lifetime revenue. According to AppMagic, both IAP revenue and downloads peaked in 2022–2023 before entering a sustained contraction through 2025, as competition intensified within the category Metacore created. Metacore’s attempts to diversify beyond Merge Mansion failed to yield a second globally distributed title. As CEO Mika Tammenkoski stated, “The competition has become tougher every year since we launched Merge Mansion and created the merge-2 category as a pioneer.”

Metacore’s financial history reflects the arc of a studio built around a single breakout title. Based on the chart below, revenue grew at a ~253% CAGR from 2020 to its 2023 peak, before declining 4% in 2024 as the game’s growth plateaued. Operating losses peaked in 2021, the year Supercell’s $180m credit line was deployed primarily toward marketing and user acquisition, before narrowing steadily over the following two years. The studio reached operating profitability for the first time in 2024, posting $16m in EBIT on ~$168m (€154m) in revenue, the profitability inflection arriving precisely as revenue softened.

The headcount evolution adds another dimension to this picture. Based on the chart below, the number of employees grew steadily from 15 in 2020 to 223 in 2024, while revenue per FTE peaked at $2.1m in 2021 before declining to $0.8m by 2024 as the team continued to expand, even as game revenue plateaued. As Tammenkoski acknowledged, the company “built an organization with growth ambitions that have not materialized as expected,” making the planned reduction of up to 160 roles a structural correction rather than a reactive cut.

The full acquisition formalizes what was already a deep operational relationship, bringing Merge Mansion into a portfolio operating at a scale that sets an exceptionally high internal bar. Supercell’s catalog includes some of the highest-grossing mobile titles ever made, with Clash of Clans alone surpassing $10B in lifetime revenue and three further titles each clearing $2B+, setting a portfolio standard that frames both the ambition and the distance Merge Mansion has to travel. The acquisition raises a genuine strategic question: Merge Mansion, with ~$700m in lifetime revenue and declining metrics over the past two years, is entering Supercell’s live-ops framework at the same time as the merge-2 genre it pioneered has grown sharply more competitive, with both Gossip Harbor (Microfun) and Travel Town (Moon Active) having already displaced it from the category leadership it once held. Supercell has been explicit that this is a turnaround play, intending to apply its live operations and user acquisition capabilities to help Merge Mansion regain category leadership, while using the title to reach a broader casual player audience than Supercell currently serves. Whether those capabilities are the right tool for a genre now dominated by faster-moving rivals is a question the integration will have to answer. We will continue to monitor how the acquisition develops and whether Merge Mansion can find a path back to growth inside one of gaming’s most demanding live-ops portfolios.