Supercell’s Squad Busters released globally today, May 29th, 2024, officially joining the roster as Supercell’s sixth fully launched game.
Its 16-month journey since reveal has included multiple closed betas, an incredibly popular soft launch this April, and a number of tweaks and refinements along the way.
This pre-release period and successful soft launch start have ultimately led to today, Supercell’s first full release in over five years.
Early days
Squad Busters was first revealed in January 2023 as a multiplayer title bringing together popular characters from across Supercell’s IPs like Clash of Clans, Hay Day and Boom Beach. Canadian players were soon given hands-on experience via a closed beta that February, the feedback from which influenced a second closed beta in May 2023.
The second beta gave more eager players a chance to try out Squad Busters, releasing in Canada, Spain and Mexico, but only for one week. Even so, in that time it became apparent that significant changes had already been implemented – such as the ability to reroll a player’s characters for a given round.
The character merging mechanic was also introduced in the second beta, now a selling point of Squad Busters and a focal point of the launch trailer; acquiring three copies of one character allows them to super-size, becoming stronger, increasing health, and granting an ability bonus.
Up to speed
More recently, on April 23rd, 2024, the “love letter to Supercell IPs” entered soft launch and reached 100,000 Google Play downloads on day one, extra impressive considering this was still across a limited pool of countries (including Canada, Denmark, Finland, Mexico, Norway, Singapore, Spain, and Sweden).
Squad Busters’ early success wasn’t limited to Android either. On iOS, the game ranked at the top of the App Store’s downloads chart in Spain, Finland, and Canada, as well as being Spain’s 10th highest-earning mobile game of the day.
Only two days later, on April 25th, Supercell confirmed Squad Busters would see a global release on May 29th, marking the company’s sixth game to make it this far.
With all the excitement behind it, Squad Busters earned over $2 million in revenue during its one-month soft launch period, and more than 30 million people pre-registered for the global version. Advertisement campaigns have been in full swing too – Supercell decorating famous faces like Ken Jeong and Chris Hemsworth in Squad Busters attire – all to give the game the greatest push possible.
Now, launch day is here, and the rewards of Supercell’s five-year process to release another game are about to be discovered… But while sure to be a hit, perhaps the game is already leaving money on the table?
This article is part of our Road to Helsinki series, where we put the spotlight on the Finnish and Nordic games industries ahead of Pocket Gamer Connects Helsinki on October 1st and 2nd.
