Inside Squad Busters’ $150 Million Experiment
For more than a decade, Supercell has been the embodiment of creative restraint in gaming. The Helsinki-based studio built its global reputation by launching only billion-dollar games, while killing everything else before global launch.
Its teams, small, independent “cells”, worked quietly, experimenting with prototypes until one showed a spark of potential. Dozens of projects were abandoned along the way, all in pursuit of the company’s north star: to make games that would be played for years and remembered forever.
The last game to fit the “remembered forever bill” was Brawl Stars, which launched back in 2018. And despite all the success from mastering live operations, Supercell's new game dry streak was proof that the decade-old formula wasn’t working anymore. Something drastic had to be done…
Then came Squad Busters. As the company neared a decade without a new major global hit, leadership made a bold decision: instead of the usual drawn-out soft-launch cycle, they would skip it entirely. The bet was that internal data, the collage of all of the company’s IPs in one game, and strong feedback from Apple and Google were enough to validate the concept. This was a recalibration of ambition, a desire to prove that Supercell could still surprise the world. And of course, a bit of (earned) hubris. A feeling that you can achieve anything you want.
The result was one, if not the most cinematic, mobile launch in the history of mobile games!
Squad Busters debuted in June 2024 with A-list Hollywood talent, global PR blitzes, full support from Apple and Google, and a multi-channel influencer campaign that blanketed YouTube and TikTok. It was an entertainment event. The marketing carried the tone of a Marvel release, not a mobile free-to-play title.
For a couple of exhilarating weeks, it worked. Squad Busters shot into the top charts, amassing over 60 million downloads and reaching around $25 million in monthly revenue. Supercell, once again, had the world’s attention. I know I was bought in on the hype. After all, surely the always measured company wouldn’t put a $100M launch campaign unless they knew the game would be a guaranteed success.
But as quickly as it rose, the momentum began to fade. The cracks in the design became apparent, and this time around, the company couldn’t fix them post-launch. Changing the team leadership was the last attempt until the game was finally cancelled.
What “Going Big” Really Costs
To understand the magnitude of Squad Busters, it’s worth unpacking what “going big” actually means in today’s market. According to Sensor Tower, out of 60 roughly 25 million of the game’s installs were paid, with around 40% of those on iOS. Post-ATT, cost-per-install in Western markets for premium-tier titles typically ranges from $4 to $6 on iOS, while Android averages $1 to $2 in global tier-2 and tier-3 markets. That alone puts the user acquisition bill around $65 million.
According to Sensor Tower, the game reached 60M downloads across all platforms, generating roughly 80M in net revenue.
The not-so-steep and quickly flattening Revenue per Download curve of Squad Busters indicates that the players didn’t make significant purchases or repeat purchases. This further indicates poor retention, which in turn is due to the cracks in the design, bundled with poor traffic coming through top-of-the-funnel promotion.
Then there’s the brand layer, the spectacle that transformed a game launch into a cultural moment. The Hollywood talent cost about $15 million in direct fees, with another $5 million on production, editing, and logistics.
Influencer partnerships and creator collaborations added another $20 million, while global PR, trailers, and event placements, from the Summer Game Fest appearances to presence in all major publications, likely added $5 million more.
Finally, we arrive at the hidden cost: development. Squad Busters was in active production for at least 5 years, with an average team size of 60 people split between Helsinki and London. I’m counting in support functions and contractors. At EU rates, that’s roughly $30 to $45 million in total production expenditure.
Altogether, the fully loaded investment comes to nearly $150 million, which is a conservative estimate.
The game generated roughly $70–80 million in revenue before cancellation, a shortfall by any commercial measure, but hardly even meaningful for a company that cleared around a $1 billion in EBITDA the year Squad Busters was launched.
The Two Sides of the Coin
The instinctive reaction is to call this a misfire. Sure, it was financially. But it was also an act of necessary experimentation. For years, industry observers criticized Supercell for being too careful, for letting fear of imperfection delay every launch.
There are two ways to read this:
The first is that Supercell overreached. They trusted internal validation and platform feedback over the empirical grind of soft launch testing. They got cocky with their live operation success and believed that they could fix any game mid-flight, as they’d done several times before.
The second, and perhaps more generous, interpretation is that the company finally took a creative swing large enough to test its own resilience. Sometimes, progress demands overextension. Sometimes, a company must bet heavily not to win, but to remember how to bet at all.
That tension, between discipline and daring, sits at the heart of this story. Squad Busters wasn’t just a product; it was a cultural mirror. It reflected what happens when an organization defined by perfectionism tries to rediscover its risk appetite.
And let's be honest, behind the CEO's extremely positive public announcement on LinkedIn, some profound changes in the company can be directly or indirectly attributed to Squad Busters:
The departure of the COO
The departure of the CMO
The removal of the Chief Game Lead position
Launching Spark Labs to create games with internal and external talent outside the Supercell offices
Launching AI Labs to build games with external teams using AI
Philosophical Musing: The Lesson for the Industry
There’s a paradox at the core of every successful company. The very systems that produce greatness eventually threaten to stifle it. Supercell’s story is a living example of this paradox.
Its past success was founded on discipline. “No” was the default answer as the company reached unprecedented heights with a tiny, super-focused team. But discipline, when over-extended, can become fear.
And Supercell has a litany of fears it has successfully conquered: Fear of growing the team size. Fear of opening studios outside Helsinki. Fear of acquiring companies. Fear of expanding outside gaming into broader entertainment.
Fear of failure was the last one, and Squad Busters conquered it. The game didn’t succeed commercially, but it succeeded in something existential: the right to try, even at scale and fail.
Yet the deeper takeaway isn’t about Supercell at all. It’s about the economics of modern mobile gaming. Building a new top-10 title in 2025 is a nine-figure endeavor.
The days when a small team could quietly prototype a $3 million game and turn it into a billion-dollar franchise are all but gone. Attention costs money. Discoverability costs more. Featuring on platforms is nearly worthless. “Organic traffic” is the result of massive creator campaigns and huge investments into brand marketing. The mobile industry has reached a stage where creative success is inseparable from marketing logistics years ago.
In the end, I believe that Squad Busters will be remembered as a great lesson that even the best-run studios must occasionally fall forward to keep moving. And in a creative industry, that’s not a loss.
Personally, I want to thank the Squad Busters team for tens of hours of fun.
