Supercell's Clash Royale Lessons from Failed Updates

Supercell's Clash Royale has had its share of ups and downs over the years, with some major backlash from players and fans over updates.

During a session at Gamescom Dev titled 'Clash Royale: Lessons from the players', Supercell game design lead James Back and community manager Emilia Russell shared their insights from three game updates and what the team learned from them.

Two of the updates were received poorly by the game's community.

The first update was the removal of the Season Shop, a popular reward system in the game, in March 2025.

According to Back, the team felt that the Season Shop only benefitted a small group of core players and they wanted to put the rewards somewhere more accessible to more players.

The update worked at achieving that goal, with the percentage of monthly active users earning any common wild cards growing from 59.8% in March 2025 to 67.4% in April 2025.

However, due to the Season Shop's popularity, its sudden removal resulted in "broken trust" and negative sentiment.

The average daily rating on Google Play plummeted.

Russell noted that the harsh and critical feedback from players comes from a place of caring about the game and wanting the best for it, even if it's not always given in the most clear or constructive way.

Back said that the big takeaway from this update was that if players are really attached to something that the team is confident is unhealthy for the game overall, that could be actionable feedback, even if they're going to go ahead with removing that thing.

He added that maybe trying to allow a positive experience with the change, giving what's going away a big sendoff, and making sure players are excited for what's coming next.

Back also mentioned that making sure you talk about it with the community shows that you validate and understand the pain points they are going through.

Russell added that not taking the community by surprise, good or bad, can really be hard to reframe a narrative once it's set.

The second update was the addition of a new card level, Level 16, in November 2025.

Back explained that upgrading your deck towards the next level is a goal that almost all of Clash Royale's players have in common.

However, for some players, maxing out their deck is just the beginning, while for others, it's the end of the journey.

The team tried to alleviate friction points and make it more player-friendly, including accelerating progression speed in parts of the game.

At the same time, Supercell was introducing new gameplay content, including Evolutions to a third of its characters and a Hero version of some characters.

However, the reaction to the level system went as expected, given player sentiment, while the Heroes "quickly turned into villains".

Back said that the team now understands that players will assume the worst about how hard it will be to acquire new stuff after release.

Russell added that there were some valid points around accessibility to new content, lack of predictability around when you'd unlock your next Hero, and some existing perceptions around pay to win.

The team pushed out an update to address the feedback in mid-March and made a commitment to players that it was finished adding card levels in June.

Back said that Supercell has accepted that it needs to find a new direction for the game's progression system.

Russell said that Supercell has made commitments and process changes to involve the community and creators as co-collaborators and partners in the development of Clash Royale moving forward.

The third update was the addition of a new game mode, C.H.A.O.S. Mode, in March.

Back said that the mode had a meaningful impact on engagement metrics for the season that it ran.

Russell noted that part of what made this mode so popular was because it came with no strings attached.

The mode had a really fresh and democratised experience of fun and didn't really depend on your past progression.

C.H.A.O.S. has continued to see some of the highest play rates of the temporary game modes Supercell has run and the feedback has stayed positive.

Back said that in this instance, while there was a lot of noise from players around new game modes, they started to see that players are not just asking for new gameplay, they want novelty that they really sink their teeth into and depth they can really enjoy mastering.

The final lessons from Russell and Back included investing in knowing your community and being able to pull out the actionable feedback from the noise, making sure when you take action on that feedback, you bring players along, weighing up what players say they do and don't want, and taking that into account for the game's future direction, and demonstrating that you hear the community and have respectful dialogue.