Squad Busters, Sandsoft, Boss Fight, the ‘billion dollar blueprint’, Google Play, more

Hello and welcome to the mobile gamer.biz podcast. I'm Neil Long and every week I go for a walk and tell you what's happening in the mobile game business. Here we go. Some breaking news. Supercell is closing Squadbusters. It will close down for good. Midway through 2026. There will be a final update in December. Inapp purchases have been disabled in the game and players can ask for refunds or transfer their balance over to other Supercell titles. Squadbusters released worldwide in May 2024 after a short soft launch. There was a big celebrity campaign around it featuring Chris Hemsworth, Christina Richi, Ali Caravalio, and Ken Jong. In the story on the site, I quickly pulled some app magic estimates. They suggest the game has earned about 68 million to date, generating about $55 million

downloads in total. It saw a decent start, but recently monthly revenue fell below Boom Beach in March 2025 and then below Supercell's newest title, Moco, in July. According to App Magic, September's inapp purchase revenue was $260,000. It's been declining pretty rapidly since the start of the year. And that is reflected in what Supercell say in the blog announcing the closure. It refers to a crossroads in the game in early 2025. They tried to rescue it with the introduction of a heroes feature. Supercell says it was an attempt to redefine what Squadbusters could be. But despite the team's best efforts, we were not able to find a lasting solution to its core problems. I think core problems

is probably the crux of it. I don't think it retains very well for me personally where Clash Royale and Brawl Stars kept me hooked for weeks and months. Squad busters I stopped playing after maybe two weeks. It's difficult to pass what's going on in the game. The sense of progression isn't quite there. And Supercell clearly agrees. [snorts] An interesting part of this kind of farewell blog is where Supercell says, "We wanted to move faster, take bold risks, and learn directly from a global audience instead of waiting years in a limited release." Which is reference to the likes of Clash Mini and Everddale and its various other soft launches that didn't make it. But it continues, "What we learned was that we had got it wrong. Supercell buying Space Ape, turning it into Supercell London, and appointing a game lead in London. That's appears to have been the last

throw the dice for the Squadbusters and didn't work. So, Supercell is cutting its losses and closing it down. I'm sure there will be a lot of hot takes particularly on LinkedIn from people around the industry, but uh for me personally, I think it is healthy that Supercell is so public about its failures and is painfully honest about where it gets things wrong. As you will hear later on in this podcast, lots of companies just try and stay under the radar and try and get away with as little criticism as possible. not Supercell. From a press point of view, that is valuable and useful. There will be more postmortem content from Supercell to come, which may or may not be on the site at some point in the future. So, yeah, a sad end for Squad Busters. Saudi Outfit Sandsoft is closing, say sources, after its owners pulled the

plug. So yeah, I've been kind of sitting on this for maybe five or six weeks trying to verify that it had indeed happened from various people who would know. A lot of those at Sansoft itself were not helpful. [laughter] And indeed, I was told that people at Sandsoft, which is a Riadbased developer and publisher, were told when it was announced internally that the company was to close to be careful about what they say on LinkedIn. And effectively, it sounds like the company tried to close down as quietly as possible without anyone noticing. That didn't work. I have been trying to get an official comment from Sansoft for in at least a month, maybe five or six weeks. No one at the company has responded. Sansoft closed its game development studios in Barcelona and Riad in July.

The company said that they would now be focusing on just being a pure publisher. Maybe that was a sticking plaster over the problems at the company. But yeah, I was told that effectively the Saudi Arabian family that runs Sansoft and lots of other businesses effectively just turned around and pulled the plug one day. Some of the leadership at the company still have Sansoft on their LinkedIn profiles. Lots of people don't. A couple of people have announced their departure from Sansoft, but didn't explain why. The context around this is that in 2023, the CEO, Sansov, told me that it had a five-year plan to be the Middle East's mega publisher in the vein of an EA or a Take 2. Clearly, Sandsoft had those ambitions, maybe didn't get the funding or couldn't

get it together in terms of publishing deals and so on in the last couple of years to make that happen. As far as I can make out from LinkedIn estimates, there are about 40 people affected in Riad. But again, it is difficult to 100% confirm this stuff because the company is simply not responding. As a couple of people noted after that story is published in DMs and so on, this is the risk with taking the Saudi dollar. you're effectively at the whims of a very small number of very wealthy people. And if they suddenly decide they don't want to invest in gaming anymore, this could all just go away and leave quite a trail of destruction. Hopefully that will not happen. You would assume those people were paid rather well during their time at Sandsoft. So maybe they'll have a little bit more runway to then decide what they do next.

A story that broke late Thursday night, Friday morning, Netflix closed Boss Fight, the maker of Squid Game Unleashed. That game was worked on by around 100 developers in total. Boss Fight told me in December 2024, it's unclear how many of those staff were full-time on that game at Boss Fight, but according to LinkedIn estimates, there are around 80 staff working at the company currently. Netflix did not publicly confirm the studios closure, but it's clear that it has happened. You have three senior leaders saying the company has closed on LinkedIn. Squid Game Unleashed was heralded as a big success even in Netflix earnings calls. So little puzzling to see that studio closed down. I'm told that the game will continue to be supported by other

developers within Netflix. It's not going away. The other titles that Boss Fight made, the Netflix story dating romance games, they will also continue to be supported. But yeah, having acquired Boss Fight 3 years ago, the studio is now no more. You are halfway through the podcast. Well done. Here's a commercial break. I'll be back after this. Exola connects developers with the resources they need to build, [music] fund, launch, and monetize their mobile games globally with Exola Web Shop. Sell virtual items, in-game [music] currency, subscriptions, and custom offers directly to players while driving up to five times the revenue growth. With the industry's number one web shop [music] solution, Exola provides the tools for developers to focus on what's most important, creating great games. Visit exola.com to learn more. [music] That's xsol.com. Also this week, Akin Babette, I think

I'm saying that right. His billiondoll blueprint was the subject of a panel I attended at Moadictum conference last week. If you're listening to this, you know who Akin is. He was an important figure in the rise of Peak. He worked at Facebook. He co-founded Triple Dot and built that business up. Luna Labs. He helped build that and sold it onto Iron Source. So, a very successful man. He's now got a hund00 million VC fund called Arcadia and has invested personally in companies like Dream Games, Spike, Good Job Games, and others. Pretty much all Turkish studios as far as I'm aware. He's now a full-time VC. And given his influence on the business, I thought it'd be good to write up his session from Mobictum last week. A simple but effective investing philosophy. I just invest where there's a good team and

good numbers. He claimed that Western developers are quote kind of screwed up against competition from China, Turkey, and Vietnam. And developers in those markets in particular know how to take something they know works, add a little bit of differentiation, brute force something out onto the market, look at the numbers, tweak and build from there. He also stated his belief that mobile game firms must choose between being either product first or marketing first to succeed. You cannot be both. He says you cannot be halfway product halfway marketing. So the examples of those are dream games product company triple dot a marketing company. He also says VCs are chasing each other's tails and investing in the same stuff particularly noting the fever around hybrid casual. He's not as

confident in that market as he is in match threes. He was saying that royal match a candy crush games like match villains will continue to be played for the next 10 years. Hobbit casual games maybe not so much. But he did end positively. He noted that Arcadia his VC firm will be making some big announcements soon and there are buyers out there including Scoply Tensson Mini Supercell and Triple Dot who are all active he says. So yeah, interesting stuff from Akin, an influential figure in the business. And when he says stuff in public, people listen. Also published on Wednesday, Google Play opening up in the US. This is the cherry on the cake of Epic's various lawsuits. Essentially, from now, Google can no longer restrict the use of alternative payment systems in the US Google Play Store or force developers to use Google Play billing.

So, this mirrors what happened in the US with the App Store case when the grumpy judge threw out all of Apple's arguments and just said developers can just do what they want on the US App Store. So, party time for web shop companies, Epic and Unity, having just joined that web shop race will also be pleased with this. Um, another step along the way of payments liberation, you might say, although Tim Sweeney not doing a victory lap like he usually does on X around this one, which is a shame. EA posted what could be among its final earnings reports for the quarter ended September 30th, 2025. EA's mobile arm reported net revenue of 275 million, a year-on-year drop of 4%. Ordinarily, I wouldn't write this up as a story. A 4%

drop is not particularly newsworthy, but I thought it was interesting because of context around the Saudi takeover and the fact that actually that pending acquisition means that EA will no longer be hosting conference calls or providing forward-looking guidance. If the deal closes as expected in EA's Q127, which begins in April 2026, this might be one of the last earnings reports we see from EA and then it effectively goes dark and we won't be able to see how much it makes from mobile every quarter and every year. So yeah, get these numbers while you can. That 275 million earned from mobile was about 15% of EA's total net revenue. Console accounted for 1.2 billion in net revenue around 66% and PC and other came in about 352 million about 19% of the

total. On Monday we published a thing about Pokémon Go. Matthew Reynolds, a very experienced games journalist who was at Eurogamer and Polygon, is a real expert in Pokémon Go. I asked him to write up what has changed about the game since the Scopely takeover using the recent revamp of its leveling system as the jumping off point. So, you should read the whole piece because he really knows what he's talking about. But in summary, the game is far more aggressive in its monetization, which has effectively happened since that scopely takeover. There are a ton of events in Pokémon Go now near capacity, says Matthew. And although in this leveling update there were a lot of freebies and ways to reward regular players, the expense of doing anything in Pokémon Go now has noticeably

increased as you would probably expect after a scope takeover. He ends the piece talking about its 10th anniversary, which will be next summer, and says that there will be a lot of returning players amidst all the noise around that 10th anniversary, but those players may be in for a bit of a shock at the price of things. In Data Digest, we have Dream Games hitting 7 billion in total user spend according to App Magic. A royal match is of course 95% of those earnings. Honor of Kings monthly active users reaches $260 million. Incredible number. Mostly China, but some in the West. Apple lost a $2 billion UK app store case, which means that the tech giant may be on the hook to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in damages to UK consumers for

quote excessive and unfair prices on the app store. Pokemon TCG Pocket celebrating its first anniversary has acred 150 million downloads in its first year on the market across iOS and Android according to the Pokémon company. Gameloft also reported its revenues down year 2.3%. It made about 67 million 778 million in Q3. Disney Dreamlight Valley, Asphalt Legends, Disney Magic Kingdoms, March of Empires, and Disney Speedstorm were the five top earners in Gamesoft's portfolio. Resident Evil Survival Unit passed 2 million pre-registrations. Mag Interactive posted revenue of $29.3 million in its year-end results for 2425. Notable that the cost of user acquisition grew 77%

yearonear. More stats on that in the article. And data digest finishes on Q3's top hybrid hybrid casual games according to AppMagic. Inapp purchase revenue rose 114% among those top games in Q3. Loads more stats and graphs to look at there. Soft launch, Roio's new Angry Birds match 3, Hoyo versus Animal Crossing alike, and Scopley's Strange, Monopoly Go, Chat Companion, and more in that one alongside regular soft launch titles from Playrex, Ubisoft, Supercell, EA, a load of soft launches from Mini Clip, and more. And finally, off the record, Wednesday, November 19th, Mini Clips London office, 1:30 p.m. onwards. Come along. It is supported by Exola, and you

can expect more unfiltered, off thereord discussion of what's really going on in the mobile games business. Short, snappy panels, long networking breaks, and roundts designed to help you build relationships with your peers. Thank you. Goodbye.