How Supercell’s newest game launched with tens of millions of players (GAM309)

Supercell's Launch of "Squad Busters" on AWS

Overview

  1. Introduction to Supercell

    • Supercell's mission is to create games that players will remember and enjoy for years.
    • Supercell has launched 5 games globally with over 6 billion installations and 200 million monthly active players.
    • Supercell has a unique "cell" model where game teams have autonomy to make decisions for their games.
  2. About "Squad Busters"

    • "Squad Busters" is a 10-player multiplayer mobile game where players compete to collect the most gems.
    • The game features characters and worlds from other Supercell games like "Clash of Clans" and "Hay Day".
    • The game had a soft launch in limited countries before the global launch.
  3. Launch Preparation

    • Supercell aimed for "Squad Busters" to be their biggest launch ever, with over 40 million pre-registered players.
    • They leveraged cross-platform promotions in other Supercell games and collaborated with content creators to build hype.
    • The team had to estimate the server capacity needed to handle the expected player influx on launch day.
  4. Technical Architecture

    • "Squad Busters" is a realtime multiplayer game with a stateful architecture.
    • The main site handles everything except the battles, which are run on distributed battle server instances around the world.
    • Supercell uses Amazon Aurora as their database, and has migrated all their games to Aurora 3 with Graviton instances.
  5. Load Testing and Challenges

    • Supercell conducted extensive load testing to understand the scaling limits of their battle server instances.
    • They used custom load test clients to simulate real player behavior and identify potential bottlenecks.
    • Key challenges included estimating the number of players at launch and provisioning the right server capacity.
  6. AWS Countdown

    • Supercell utilized AWS Countdown, a service that provides architectural and scaling guidance, as well as operational support during launch events.
    • AWS Countdown helped Supercell with capacity planning, region selection, and understanding capacity reservation options.
  7. Launch Day

    • On launch day, Supercell had 2,300 servers across 7 AWS regions, with over 15,000 CPUs ready to run the game simulations.
    • The game saw a rapid influx of players, reaching half a million concurrent players within an hour of launch, and crossing 1 million within 2 hours.
    • The launch was Supercell's biggest ever, with 17 million players joining in the first 24 hours.
  8. Takeaways

    • Eliminate unknown factors by conducting thorough load testing and checking all relevant quotas.
    • Involve the AWS team and utilize services like AWS Countdown early in the launch preparation process.
    • Be prepared for launch spikes by provisioning sufficient server capacity, but also consider dynamically scaling down after the initial rush.

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