Supercell is to close Squad Busters, with a final update coming in December before the game shuts down entirely midway through 2026.
The game was released worldwide in May 2024 after a short soft launch with a celebrity-packed ad campaign starring Chris Hemsworth, Christina Ricci, Auliʻi Cravalho and Ken Jeong.
Appmagic estimates suggest the game has earned Supercell around $68m in total, generating ~55m downloads to date. After a good start, monthly Squad Busters revenue dropped below Supercell’s legacy title Boom Beach in March 2025, and then below Supercell’s newest title, mo.co, in July. September’s IAP revenue, according to Appmagic, was around $260k.
“At Supercell, we celebrate what we learn from our failures, and Squad Busters was an opportunity to apply some of those lessons, especially from previous games with long beta periods,” explained Supercell. “We wanted to move faster, take bold risks, and learn directly from a global audience instead of waiting years in a limited release.”
“What we learned was that we had got it wrong. The game did not meet the high expectations that both you, our players, and we at Supercell have for our games, and by early 2025, we faced a true crossroads, either accept that Squad Busters might never grow into the kind of global phenomenon we dreamed of, or take a big creative swing. We chose the latter.”
“The introduction of Heroes was the boldest game change of this scale in Supercell’s live game history, an attempt to redefine what Squad Busters could be. But despite the team’s best efforts and your continued support, we were not able to find a lasting solution to its core problems.”
Supercell added: “After months of reflection, we have made the extremely difficult decision to end active development of Squad Busters. While this is not the outcome we hoped for, we believe it is the right decision to stay true to Supercell’s goal of creating games that players can love for years.”
In-app purchases have been switched off today, and players who have made an in-app purchases this year can request a balance transfer to another of Supercell’s titles. Dedicated players will also be able to claim free bundles through the Supercell Store for its other games based on their total Squad Busters playtime.
