Software developers are generally paid quite a bit less in Finland than in the valley (e.g. 5k euros is quite high for a dev there) with a comparable cost of living. It's expensive in Helsinki and you won't find better paid developers anywhere in the world outside of the states.
Not to say the above is correct - it's no sweat shop and the few outliers like supercell and rovio cannot possibly be there because they threw a lot of labor at it. They're quality game companies that hit the market at the right time and knew their audience enough to keep them.
Just to add about the employment costs in Finland: 5000 € gross salary means about 6000 € total cost with payroll-related taxes and mandatory payments included, and about 3250 € net pay per month after taxes.
It's certainly no sweat shop, but I would consider it modest cost if you account for the quality of the developers.
Actually, Scandinavia in general has high quality developers on the cheap compared to the states. This while their quality of life seems on a whole better - seems a win/win to invest in or open satellite offices there :)
And, for good or bad, it is also much easier to both expand/hire and close/downsize in Scandinavia than in other parts of Europe. At least in Denmark and Finland, maybe less so in Sweden. (Norway is really expensive to hire anyone, though).
This flexibility to lay off people is not always a win/win for employees (considering Nokia/ALU merger right now) but I think that investors generally overestimate the bureaucratic difficulties in Scandinavian countries in this respect. Scandinavian countries are very free market economies despite being "socialist".
"Clash of Clans is Supercell which is a foreign company that can afford to pay their developers less money in a foreign market. Any US or EU company would have a hard time competing with them."
This really isn't true, as the costs of personnel are usually dwarfed by the costs of marketing.
Hey now, give Kate Upton credit where it's due; she also struts around battlefields and tells people to shoot monsters with catapults. That's hard fucking work.
