Supercell acquired a 51 per cent stake in game startup Frogmind, the firm behind Badland, which has more than 45 million players, for €7 million.

“We will continue to operate completely independently as Frogmind, publish our own games and get to decide what games to make and how. It’s very similar to the way Supercell operated under SoftBank and now under Tencent,” said Frogmind CEO and co-founder Johannes Vuorinen.

Since its employees still own 49 per cent of the company, “we continue to feel strong ownership of our games and studio”.

“We’ll be able to focus fully onto our games and worry less about finances,” he said, adding that thanks to the investment it can now be more ambitious with its plans.

Frogmind was founded in 2012 and, like Supercell, is based in Helsinki. In April 2013 it launched Badland, followed by Badland 2 in 2015.

It is now gearing up to launch three new free-to-play games next year.

“Changing from the premium game mindset to ‘free to play’ is not the easiest thing, but after an educational one and half years of killed prototypes we found something we felt really good about,” said Vuorinen.

Back in July, Chinese internet giant Tencent acquired up to 84 per cent of Supercell, for around $8.6 billion, valuing the company at approximately $10.2 billion.

Supercell has a small but very popular portfolio of games, which includes Clash of Clans.