Founded in 2003 by Helsinki University of Technology students Niklas Hed, Jarno Väkeväinen and Kim Dikert, the company is best known for the Angry Birds franchise.

[3][4] In 2003, three students from the Helsinki University of Technology, Niklas Hed, Jarno Väkeväinen and Kim Dikert, participated in a mobile game development competition at the Assembly demo party sponsored by Nokia and Hewlett-Packard.

A victory with a mobile game called King of the Cabbage World led the trio to set up their own company, Relude.

King of the Cabbage World was sold to Sumea, and renamed to Mole War, which became one of the first commercial real-time multiplayer mobile games.

Rovio partnered with Activision again to port the title to video game consoles and handhelds, with it being released on those platforms in October 2013.

[15] In addition, it was revealed that their flagship series, Angry Birds, "leaked data" to third-party companies, possibly to surveillance agencies like the NSA.

Pekka Rantala stated that the decrease is due to the poor sales of the licensed merchandise and the by-products of Angry Birds.

[25] In December 2015, Rantala announced that he would step down as the CEO and would be succeeded by Kati Levoranta, former chief legal officer of Rovio, in January 2016.

[29] Later that month Rovio reported that it has returned to profitability with a gross revenue of US$201 million with the success of The Angry Birds Movie and its recent video games.

[36] On 30 November 2018, Rovio announced that they had fully acquired PlayRaven, the developer known for making strategy games such as Eve: War of Ascension.

[39] In 2021, the New Mexico attorney general filed a federal lawsuit against Rovio, alleging the company illegally collected and sold private personal data of users under thirteen to third party advertisers.

[3] On December 7, Rovio closed down the Montreal based division Studio Lumi leading to the loss of 16 jobs.

[43][44] Prior to creating Angry Birds, Rovio developed 51 games, a combination of work-for-hire projects, publishing contracts and independently released titles.