Supercell has appointed Space Ape veteran Johnathan Rowlands as Squad Busters’ new general manager.
As we reported earlier this week, Space Ape is now effectively closed, but around 70 of its staff have moved to what is now Supercell London. And 10 year Space Ape veteran Rowlands has claimed one of the biggest roles at the new outfit.
The switch follows the Supercell’s acquisition of Space Ape in November 2024. It was previously majority stakeholder, but didn’t own the business outright.
According to LinkedIn, Rowlands’ new role will be split between London and Helsinki. He most recently served as Space Ape’s head of studio, and prior that was general manager and executive producer for the studio’s music games, Beatstar and Country Star. In 2020/21, he was Beatstar’s game lead.
Rowlands has also worked as game lead on Space Ape’s builder-battler Rival Kingdoms and two other unannounced projects. He first joined the firm in 2015 as market insight analyst.
His new role as head of Supercell’s latest release, Squad Busters, will present a big challenge – Supercell CEO Ilkka Paananen recently described the game’s launch as “disappointing”, though the company also said it has already earned $100m in gross player spend since launch on May 29 2024.
Appmagic estimates that Supercell has earned $68.5m from the game to date, which tallies roughly with Supercell’s $100m gross player spend figure, once you subtract Apple and Google’s 30% IAP cut.
The numbers suggest Supercell earned under $1.9m from Squad Busters in January 2025. That puts it ahead of legacy title Boom Beach, which earned $1.2m in the same month, but way behind the Finnish firm’s heavy hitters, which are much larger.
The data puts Brawl Stars at $33.7m earned in January 2025, with Clash of Clans on $22.4m, Clash Royale on $13.2m and Hay Day at $11.1m.
Squad Busters has racked up 50.4m lifetime downloads, with the US leading the way on both player spend (38% of the total) and in terms of downloads (14%).
Other key markets in terms of lifetime player spend are Germany (8%), South Korea, France (both 6%) and Japan (4%). By downloads, Brazil takes up the second largest chunk of players with 10% of lifetime installs, with Mexico on 7%, and Turkey and France each on 6%.
Supercell CEO Paananen in a recent post-financials Q&A that Squad Busters had made “a promising start,” but “it’s fair to say that the Squad Busters game team’s aspirations are way, way higher…The game is nowhere near their ambition level. And we’ve learned so much about the launch and what actually this larger mass of players want”.
