Squad Busters takings pass $50 million, but how does it compare to Supercell’s greatest hits?

• Supercell’s Squad Busters is off too a good start… But how much money is ‘enough money’?
• After all, Brawl Stars generated $121 million during its launch period, and Clash Royale $275.6 million…

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Supercell’s ensemble action game Squad Busters has surpassed $50 million in gross revenue two months to the day since its global launch.

The title released worldwide on May 29th, 2024 and crossed the milestone on July 28th, hitting $50.2 million by AppMagic estimates. That sum does include the $2.2 million generated during soft launch.

In the shadow of greatness

Squad Busters is Supercell’s first full release of the decade and its only new title since 2018’s Brawl Stars to evade the company’s eager axe; Supercell’s high expectations for its mobile games has seen many titles shut down after the beta testing phase, Floodrush and Boom Beach: Frontlines among them.

Supercell also beta tested new game mo.co in late 2023, giving players hands-on experience with the game, but the portal hopper has yet to make a return.

In Squad Busters’ case, trusting in its revenue potential and granting the game a full launch has netted Supercell $50.2 million in gross revenue so far. The US represents its biggest market share with $19.6 million spent, followed by Germany’s $5 million and France’s $3.2 million.

However, while an outright money printer by many a mobile game maker’s standards, Squad Busters isn’t exactly the biggest success story to Supercell’s name. Brawl Stars, for example, generated $121 million in the same time frame – across its final month of soft launch and first two months of global release.

And during its equivalent launch period, 2016’s Clash Royale raked in an even mightier $275.6 million – more than five times Squad Busters’ result.

Reasons to be cheerful

Though it hasn’t reached the early heights of its predecessors, Squad Busters still has plenty of accolades to its name. It remains one of the industry’s most successful launches of 2024 thus far, having earned $10 million in its first week alone and $34 million in its first month.

It also won a hard-fought battle for a trailer at Summer Game Fest, which Supercell marketing boss Rob Lowe admitted “wasn’t easy” with it being a mobile game, and ranked as only the 34th highest-grossing game that month.

And despite declines in player spending after launch and into July, earnings have now seeminglu stabilised through recent weeks with at least $3 million in weekly revenue.

As to whether Supercell will be happy with such a steady performance is another matter however. And whether the Squad Busters team can work their supercharging magic and achieve a comeback boost as they did with Brawl Stars remains to be seen.

Don’t forget, we’ll be highlighting the great and the good of the Finnish games industry at Pocket Gamer Connects Helsinki on October 1st and 2nd. See you at the show!