Zynga's founder says he had a handshake deal to buy Supercell for $400m, and his own board killed it

Mark Pincus, who founded Zynga and ran it through its FarmVille peak and its collapse, says the company came within a board vote of owning Supercell. Speaking on the Deconstructor of Fun podcast, Pincus said he and Supercell chief executive Ilkka Paananen had shaken hands on an all-cash $400 million acquisition in 2012.

Why it didn't happen

Zynga's board refused. Pincus's account is that the directors' objection was not about Supercell at all but about his own track record: he says he was told that until he could prove he could manage what he already had, they did not want him buying anything else. The immediate cause was OMGPop, the studio behind Draw Something, which Zynga had bought for around $180 million plus earnouts and then shut down.

Pincus frames it as a failure of nerve rather than a failure of analysis. "I wish I had more conviction," he said, adding that he wished he had had more confidence as a founder and chief executive "to go against the grain."

What $400m would have bought

Quite a lot, quite quickly. Supercell's revenue from Hay Day and Clash of Clans was around $101 million in 2012 - the year of the proposed deal - and $892 million the following year. Clash of Clans had only recently launched when the two companies were talking.

Why it matters

Mobile gaming's modern shape was decided by a handful of deals like this one, and the counterfactual here is unusually stark: the company that defined social gaming passed on the company that defined mobile free-to-play, for reasons that had nothing to do with the target. It is also a useful reminder of how much of industry history turns on internal politics rather than strategy.