“This is bullsh*t”: Supercell opens up on cancelled projects and the role of failure in creativity

• Ambition without constraints slowed progress on Clash Mini until hard limits forced decisive choices.
• Hay Day Pop was cancelled after the team admitted it did not truly love the genre it was making.
• Supercell cancelled a $2 million Clash of Clans campaign after deciding the work lacked long-term pride.

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Supercell has revealed lessons learned from high-profile project cancellations and how failure is a necessary part of building long-lasting games.

In a recent internal talk shared publicly, the Helsinki-based developer described how openly examining failed projects helps teams take bolder, creative risks without repeating the same mistakes.

Supercell famously announced it was shutting down a live game for the first time last year in Squad Busters. The company is still without a successful new global launch since Brawl Stars in 2018.

When the developer cancels a project, as has commonly been stated in the past, the moment is marked with a ritual champagne toast. Supercell said that’s not to celebrate failure itself, but to recognise the courage involved and the value of the lessons gained.

“It’s a ritual,” the company said in a post. “When a project gets killed, we pop champagne. Not to celebrate the failure itself, but to mark the courage it took to try and the learning that comes after. It’s a way of saying: this hurt, we know it hurt, and yet… it was still worth doing.

“The logic is simple. If failure feels dangerous, people play it safe. If failure feels survivable, or even honoured, that’s when people take real risks. And real risks are how you end up making things that matter. 

“We believe we won’t reach our mission any other way. Failure isn’t a flaw in the creative process. It’s a necessary part of it. Companies don’t fail because they take risks. They fail because they stop taking them.”

Failure as fuel

The company shared three recurring themes across cancelled games and marketing efforts. The first is that ambition requires constraints. 

Using Clash Mini as an example, Supercell said years of incremental iteration delayed hard decisions, with meaningful progress only coming once strict limits on time and scope forced bold choices.

The second lesson was the importance of genuinely loving the game being made. Puzzle title Hay Day Pop was ultimately shut down after the team concluded they lacked a deep connection to the genre, leading to over-reliance on metrics rather than instinct and player empathy.

Finally, Supercell stressed the value of pride over short-term effectiveness. A planned out-of-home campaign for Clash of Clans was cancelled in 2013 at a cost of roughly $2 million after leaders decided the creative work was not something they would stand behind long-term.

Brand marketing lead Ryan was quoted as saying of the cancellation: “I was so angry. I felt like someone from another team was telling me what we could do on our team. Truth is, I felt lied to. Culture of independent teams, right? I had only been at the company four months, and I’m like, this is bullsh*t.”

Supercell concluded: “Talking openly about failure creates the conditions for people to try hard things. It signals that the worst-case scenario isn’t shame or silence but rather a toast and a conversation about what comes next. 

“That changes how people work. It changes what they’re willing to attempt. If there’s one thing we hope people take away from this, it’s that failure isn’t the end of the story.”