Squad Busters will shut down in 2026 after struggling to meet Supercell's expectations

• Supercell has announced that Squad Busters will shutter in 2026
• The final update will be this December
• It failed to meet the incredibly high standards of the developer

As reported by our sibling site, PocketGamer.biz, Supercell has announced that after just over a year of being available in the big wide world, Squad Busters will shut down sometime in 2026, with a final update in December this year. 

While it's always sad to see anything go, this one's not particularly surprising. By Supercell's own admission, Squad Busters didn't perform as well as they'd expected. And the Finnish developer has never been shy of cutting what isn't working.

The only difference here is that they usually cancel games in soft launch rather than a fully-fledged, global launch. Squad Busters had reportedly shown a lot of promise during its short stint of limited, regional availability, so they skipped that usually lengthy process. 

And their belief in it wasn't entirely misplaced. Our own Iwan Morris reviewed Squad Busters and had plenty of good things to say. I also played a fair amount and enjoyed my time with it, too. The issue, of course, is that I stopped pretty quickly. Squad Busters is a live service. The goal is to keep people coming back regularly, as Supercell's other staples, Clash of Clans and Clash Royale, do. 

Squad Busters didn't quite have the staying power needed to be the monumental success its developer chases. That doesn't mean it did poorly, as Iwan noted in his feature on this very topic. It's just that Supercell has high standards for anything they release. 

So long, fare thee well

It's not like they didn't try their best to bolster interest, either. The team secured collaboration events with Sonic and Transformers to pull people in. They also gave Squad Busters a major overhaul with the Hero update, which aimed to improve the gameplay loop. Ultimately, it seems that it didn't quite work. 

For now, Squad Busters is available on the App Store and Google Play, where it's free-to-play. If you want to try it before it goes, you can download it for your preferred platform using the buttons below.