Much Ado About Clash Royale Creator Nothing
The recent creator flare-up around Clash Royale was not about a blog post, and like the Highguard snafu, it reflects a playbook that developers have yet to write in managing the Internet. Ilkka's annual letter asked a senior Clash Royale team member to explain their success, and he did not mention creators or streamers. One of the more prominent streamers caught wind of this and thus began an internet tantrum. A classic Reddit-style boycott ensued, and an amendment to the letter acknowledging streamers was posted.
The industry talks about creators as if their role were obvious. It is not. Clash Royale is looking north of 40 MILLION DAU, while peak streaming for Royale sat in the low hundreds of thousands. Even if one generously multiplies that by downstream effects, clips, YouTube edits, and TikTok fragments, we are left with an attribution hole. There is, of course, the causal-chain problem too. Did streaming amplify the popularity of the game, or was the game streamed because it was popular? We behave as though this distinction is settled when it is neither properly modeled nor settled.
What makes the situation unstable is that creators occupy a hybrid economic role. They are not employees, but they are revenue participants through creator codes. By publicly correcting the omission and naming a creator, Supercell implicitly elevated creators from internet anons to the new gaming fourth estate. Responding this way means feeding a fire. We have ended up building a system in which creators and streamers function as quasi-stakeholders while retaining the volatility of independent operators.
An apology was the worst thing they could have done. The internet rewards leverage, and shitstorms (see Highguard). If public agitation yields public acknowledgment, agitation becomes a rational tactic, and it has been for over 20 years with gamers.
Instead, a small separate event, unconnected as a direct response, was the appropriate move. Maybe give a creator a small 2D player card or wrap them in a fictional leaderboard interstitial.
It really does not take much, and as Plato tells us, politics is the struggle for recognition.