Finnish studio Papukaya is preparing to close
It became known about the dissolution of the Papukaya mobile game development studio. It was opened in 2020 by veterans Supercell, Rovio and Seriously Digital, who decided to make games for people "who don't consider themselves gamers."
Papukaya CEO Drussila Hollanda wrote on LinkedIn that it turned out to be too difficult to work with experimental games. Especially in a market that is becoming increasingly inaccessible to newcomers.
"As I began to understand the nature of this beast, I had to ask myself more and more serious questions: "Is the F2P segment really the best fit for what we have in mind?”, “I am generally the right leader for the company, am I capable of leading us to success?”,— Hollanda wrote. "It was tempting to ignore these thoughts and keep moving forward with blind optimism, but in the end I came to the conclusion that the wisest decision for the company is to hit the brakes and rethink what happened."
Hollanda said that in three years her studio has developed 12 prototypes and seven game projects. She eventually brought two games to release — Color Connect! and B&B Dreams.
Hollanda thanked the staff and expressed gratitude to Supercell, which invested €2.7 million in Papukaya.