Entertainment

Clash Royale’s Downfall

Marco Sina and Scotty Tito Ruiz • February 12, 2026

Introduction

Orange Juice Gaming is a content creator on YouTube that posts daily Clash Royale videos. Himself and many other content creators who spend money on the game have agreed that level 16 has ruined the game and community.

Clash Royale was immediately one of the most popular mobile games during its release, which was March 2nd, 2016. They provided regular content updates and new cards each month. The early player growth rose steadily, with many famous YouTubers, like Orange Juice Gaming, MOLT, and Surgical Goblin, making videos about the game, influencing their fan base to also play the game. The era of level 14 cards is widely seen as the peak for Clash Royale due to balanced progression and fresh meta shift by players. The game’s global downloads are over 650 million to date but isn’t growing as steady as it has been before due to its downfall. Prior to its downfall, Clash Royale was a game that all mobile gamers loved. It was an interesting, strategic, and an entertaining card game that involved the mix of creativity and strategy to defeat your opponent. Clashers would grind everyday to upgrade their cards and decks to max level and also try to get new evolutions that were added into the game each month. These players would be excited to create new decks with the newly buffed cards each season to find new strategies. They’d use these decks to push Trophy Road and also to grind Ranked and compete against all the other top players in the world.

Downfall

Clash of Clans is another game that was produced under the same company (Supercell). A lot of people enjoy this game, especially due to the frequent updates and the removal of wait time to battle with troops.

Clash Royale’s revenue hasn’t looked so good lately. Despite its popularity, Clash Royale earned less than Clash of Clans, which earned $170M in 2025 compared to Royale’s $145.8M in the same period. The downfall of Clash Royale all started with a new update to the game. Supercell, the creators of the game, thought it would be a brilliant idea to change three things about their game. The first big update was a new level to their cards. Originally, the card levels were capped at 15. Due to the new update, they introduced level 16 cards. A lot of players felt that it caused a problem because it tarnished the game’s fairness. Before level 16, most players spent years grinding to max out their decks and level up their cards. Adding this new level of the game created a new amount of time needed to be invested into the game to get back to the highest level. It also increased the pay-to-win gap due to players being able to spend real money to gain advantages in competitive game modes, like Ranked. This pushed a lot of casual players away and changed the game’s matchmaking fairness. As many players quit, and Clash Royale’s downfall began, the community’s trust declined and the game started to see a large downward spiral for players.

P2W

P2W stands for “Pay to win,” which is something Clash Royale pushes in recent updates. Clash Royale has released many updates throughout the years with one main goal: to make as much money as possible. With this in mind, they released a pass royale for players to purchase and get more chests to be able to unlock cards and level up quicker. This made many players over-leveled in lower arenas, not giving players who play for free a chance to play because of the level difference in cards.

Player Feedback

Many players haven’t found as much excitement from the game as they experienced in earlier years. With the introduction of higher level cards and evolutions, the game started to die down. Players were saying Clash Royale was “doing too much.” A student from EPHS, Adam Wronski, states, “As someone who has been playing the game for 6 years, my love for it has died down. Even though I’m not so under-leveled, with the addition of many new evolutions each update and heroes, the game is unplayable if you don’t want to spend any money. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be a new player; having to spend money just to advance must be so frustrating.” Many players contribute the downfall to evolutions. Others contribute it to the pay to win system they have. Some even contribute it to the cards not being balanced.

Competitive Scene

CRL (Clash Royale League) is Clash Royale’s E-Sports program. Top players from around the world compete against each other for a chance to win money. Players must reach top 10,000 in the Path of Legends ladder, then compete through group stages to reach the monthly Event Finals. From the monthly finals, the winners get awarded a golden ticket. The 12 golden ticket holders then move onto the finals for the grand $500,000 prize pool.

Clash Royale’s competitive scene has also seen a great downfall. During the first couple of years released, Clash Royale had a large amount of viewers for its E-Sports. It has died down throughout the years because of the great card imbalances and many professional players leaving, meaning their fanbase is most likely to leave with them, overall lowering the viewer count.

Potential Solutions

Clash Royale is many people’s childhood game and to see it die due to greed saddens their hearts. Some potential solutions are that Supercell can add more frequent balance changes to cards. This would allow players to have a chance to compete against others even if they haven’t unlocked certain cards in the game. Supercell should also lower the maximum level or just allow free to play players to reach higher trophies to be able to have a fair experience to play Clash Royale without having unfair situations, such as pay-to-win conditions.

Conclusion

With the many frequent updates Clash Royale has, it still has a chance to bounce back and rebuild its player base. If Clash Royale developers take into account all of the feedback from players, balance cards, and lessen the overall complexity of the game, Clash Royale can return to the mobile game that everyone played and loved. All in all, greed must be put aside and updates need to go back to being based on community-friendly ideas, not just what makes the most money.

References

Supercell. (n.d.). https://supercell.com/ 

A. Wronski, personal communication, January 26, 2026

Statista Research Department, Clash of clans and Clash Royale Mobile Revenue 2025

2025-2026 Issue #3

Donate to The Tiger

Your donation will support the student journalists of Elmwood Park High School. Your contribution will allow us to purchase equipment and cover our annual website hosting costs.

About the Contributors

Marco Sina, Staff Reporter

Hi! My name is Marco Sina. I’m a junior at Elmwood Park High school. I am very involved in school with sports and activities. I played soccer and volleyball and I am in Snowball, Student Council, DECA, and Varsity Club. I enjoy running and playing videogames. I plan on majoring in veterinary medicine in college and hope to travel the world when I’m older!

Scotty Tito Ruiz, Staff Reporter

My name is Scotty Ruiz. I am a part of the class of 2027. I play basketball for Elmwood Park High School and have started on Varsity since freshman year. I plan to go to college after high school and attend a 4-year university. I want to play basketball in college and make a career out of it. I have been an athlete since 4 years old and I have played various sports including baseball, hockey, and flag football. I have also been an honor roll student all my life since pre-school. My main goals in life are to build a relationship with God and become successful through basketball.