Squad Busters is the latest Supercell release to head to China
- Squad Busters may have had ups and downs in its lifespan, but it seems to have smoothed out
- Supercell now have intentions to take it eastwards, to China
- Brawl Stars was in a similar situation, and ended up doing much better after launching in the east
Squad Busters has had a few ups and downs in its brief lifespan. Be that releasing as a fairly fun little MOBA based on Supercell’s vast catalogue of recognisable characters, to having lacklustre performance in terms of revenue and other metrics, to seemingly pulling itself out of that hole in the long term.
Little surprise then, that Finnish superdev Supercell’s next move is to take this newest release eastwards and to China! Wait, what? Well, it’s not as strange as you might think. Supercell has already found success bringing one of its other releases, Brawl Stars, to China.
Yes, way back in 2019 Brawl Stars was also in a similar situation to Squad Busters. It was seen as lacking a bit performance-wise, and Supercell decided to take it east. Brawl Stars saw plenty of success early on, and China seems to be at least partially responsible for how well that it eventually ended up doing.
Playing Chicken
A brief glance further into this also shows the difficulties that developers still face getting into China, however. As there are rules limiting the number of outside releases that can get permission to launch in the lucrative Chinese market, something which means every new launch has to count if you want to make your mark.
Things have also changed in the meantime since Brawl Stars released, where it was seen as a bold, fresh new thing in the Chinese market. Since then Chinese devs have innovated more and more great new releases that’ve taken the world by storm, so Squad Busters may not have an easy time making a mark when it does release.
Planning on jumping in for yourself? Dig into our Squad Busters tier list to check out which characters you should aim for and while you should bench.
