Well, we all saw that coming. On its latest earnings call, Warner Bros’ CEO David Zaslav called Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League a disappointing release.
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is a GaaS (Game as a Service) title that nobody wanted. It’s been almost a decade since the previous Batman: Arkham title and a lot of gamers were expecting a bombastic single-player game from Rocksteady. Instead, we got yet another GaaS game. And, from the looks of it, the game did not sell well.
What’s also worth noting is that Suicide Squad: KTJL generated significantly lower revenue than Hogwarts Legacy. Hogwarts Legacy was a single-player game that came out in 2023. In my opinion, it is among the best Harry Potter games. So, the fact that a single-player game has outperformed a GaaS title is good news. And now let’s hope that Warner Bros, and all the other publishers, will get the message.
Unfortunately, this does not bode well for Rocksteady. Rocksteady hasn’t released a single game in the past ten years. So, I wouldn’t be surprised if it gets hit by lay-offs (or worse).
The funny thing here is that Warner Bros is the one to be mainly blamed for this Suicide Squad game. Similarly to Arkane Austin, I’m certain that the devs didn’t want to create a GaaS title. After all, Rocksteady has been solely developing single-player, story-driven games. This was its first online/multiplayer game.
It will be interesting to see how long Warner Bros will keep supporting Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. In the past 24 hours, the game peaked at 150 players on Steam. These are really low numbers.
As they say, you reap what you sow. As a story-driven game, Suicide Squad: KTJL was a letdown. From a gameplay perspective, it was also a big disappointment. This was a really boring third-person title (though it at least has great character movement).
And that is that. Now let Rocksteady cook a new single-player game. But hey, who am I kidding? Warner Bros may close it down after this flop.
Stay tuned for more!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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a game no one wanted made by think groups believing in stonks going up.
I think everyone with a working brain cell could tell that this wasn’t ever going to work. But warner has always shown their inability to get anything right and that isn’t related just to gaming. Also getting a good gaas game is like catching lightning in a bottle, warner should just get 100 studios working in parallel on different initiatives to get one. Good luck, you idiots.
The success of Helldivers 2 is the exception, not the norm.
What do you mean by exception? The top games on Steam are all GaaS, do you mean a GaaS game with a entry fee?
I mean creating a GaaS game and expecting it to immediately find an audience.
I think there are reasonable expectations, pick any COD, Counter Strike, FIFA, etc. so they tought a game from sucessful devs of previous Batman would sell hotcakes, but guess not.
Since a GaaS game is like a second job, they should market it as one, if you know what i mean.
In a later statement to reporters Warner Bros says water is wet.
:p
lol what did she do?
I’d probably have to play it to see but I don’t think that’s happening
Borderlands was a gift and curse on the landscape. So many games copied and molded after its co operative looter shooter mechanics that were taken from previous loot focused games. It’s borderlands success that paved the way for this model to exist and a sad that so many studios and franchises now have to die by it. I want to believe there was a version of this game that would have been great because even friends who have bought it say that its not the worst game they’ve played but in a time where they want more and more for less and less thats just not good enough.
And we call it dumpster or cesspool.
Haha, when will they ever learn. I guess never, till all the good studios are destroyed.
Warn a Brother failing once more, the adventure continues.
Now only Monolith can save the WB franchise with their upcoming game …
though I really want monolith to revisit their past NOLF, FEAR and Condemned franchises
Shogo was great too.
The Wonder Woman game? Have you seen what she looks like in that game? Her face looks mannish.
Black Deadshot – check
Kill Batman Arkham – Check
yeah absolute a remedy of succes their WB.
Also, something I just dont understand about the characters and the writing is how f–king idiotic they are, when you think about it. the JL their eyes were purple, thus heavily under influence, instead of the SS understanding that, they never acknowledged that they were being controlled lmao, so I dont know how retarded you can make characters but that was a thing that was just annoying.. THey could’ve easily tried to jam the signal and save them..
Also that only wonder woman was the one who didn’t got ‘possessed’ by Brainiac is just retarded beyond anything. The only logical reason behind = Stronk female wahmen.
im happy it disappointed, game is a hard L and RockSteady should be ashamed of their writing, and killing off Batman Arkham.
If they got some braincells left they should say its an alternate universe. Like they said the original Dead Shot (Floyd Lawton) was in a ‘alternate universe’ and that somehow this negro dude is supposedly the original, lmao. Gotta score them woke points…. So I reverse it. Because I will not accept that Batman Arkham died in such a horrible cringe game.
Doesn’t the game hint at multi-verse stuff?
Yeah somewhat, but somehow the black guy is the ‘original’ and the actual white Floyd, that we know, is the alternate version.. But then again they shot themselves in the foot by making that known by automatically creating a multiverse where a batman arkham could still be alive, so in that case, it’s a win.
Oh no no no! It’s “successful disappointment”. Rightfully earned from the very start. The New “Masterplan”…..More live service! (Kaboom)
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/74b44fef2f0dcbad01a2afe93e0cfe2221085c5e43c9f65b3dedc1ad1d21a00d.jpg
Why didnt Hades or Hades 2 go broke?
Confirmation bias. Or maybe modern slang, woke=broke, so it is unfalsifiable.
maybe its that something that was originally not woke taking the active action to become woke is what kills it? so properties that were woke and good don’t succumb to the creed?
That theory gives consumers too much agency, i think this game flopped because of the business model live service hybrid (pay 70 dollars and much more). Sure, woke elements also “help” to some extent.
Woke is more the cherry on top whenever a game go broke, it’s easy to notice but it’s myopic, doesn’t give the whole story (and most things are woke nowadays, so again, confirmation bias), if the product have quality people are more than willing to tolerate wokeness, see also Bolders Gate 3.
The trans flag in the Justice League Headquarters did not help.
Problem is that you have to buy the game to see that.
They will do it all over again and get the same results. They just don’t care. You will submit or they won’t stop. That’s there plan. The plan is that the next time you walk through the door, everyone is gay and you won’t even notice. Freakazoids will be everywhere and it will be just another Monday. That is their eventually goal. People need to stop buying this stuff if you CARE to see it stopped.
Every movie, every game and just about every medium is infected. They will never stop until you know what. To be honest I don’t know why they bother with telling us that it’s all a failure, because they’ll change nothing the next time. If anything, they’ll just double the fuq down.
Did you see the freaks they had competing in the Euro Vision contest? A mentally ill they/them won it from Switzerland.
I just looked up what you are talking about, because I’m not familiar with Euro Vision Contest and this is EXACTLY why I don’t watch TV Anymore. I basically have nothing to watch, because if I sense an ounce of Gay I’m out. A popular thing they like to do in America is have one minority on the show and have him cover the entire spectrum of weird. He’s usually Black & Gay.
The worse part is that they think black men would watch that type of garbage because they include us. They only community they are pleasing if the gay one, in that case. But that Euro Vision Contest winner looks rough bro. It’s truly over ain’t it. I love watching Real estate shows but not every other character in their is a Flaming Queermo.
Must be @dagoat since he claims to be from the country. The non-woke alternative is even more laughable, since it was non stop shilling for the israeli chick.
I mostly agree with you and believe I am more ambivalent to a game being woke or not. I think even if Suicide Squad was not woke at all by most metrics that it still would have been poorly received and as I have not played the game I don’t want to say a few clips or screenshots out of context automatically makes it woke.
I guess aside from that I do find it amusing how much of a scale wokeness can be but as soon as something doesn’t work out its the quickest scapegoat beyond poor mechanics, greedy monetization or a number of other more tangible variables that largely contribute to a properties success or failure.
“I guess aside from that I do find it amusing how much of a scale wokeness can be but as soon as something doesn’t work out its the quickest scapegoat beyond poor mechanics, greedy monetization or a number of other more tangible variables that largely contribute to a properties success or failure.”
In a sense people attribute wokeness to competency: if a game have poor features they think it is the result of non qualified people getting ahead thru non meritocratic methods (affirmative action or similar). I’m not behind the scenes on the nuts and bolts so it can be just hearsay but who knows? For example, take a sucessful game like Helldivers 2, it did have some incompetent or malicious decisions as of late, people see these disastrous decisions, see who is the one responsible and cross checks with their ideological beliefs.
Thank you. I never thought about “gwgb” as a confirmation bias in that way but this is very illuminating.
I was thinking about the Helldivers 2 issue and how the game became “woke” the moment it started having issues with PSN subscription. The thing is, the game was always woke according to current day standards, Sony as a publisher was a huge red flag, the plot is based on faux fascism similar to Starship Troopers, which is another red flag (and a reason i didn’t bother playing the first game, i can’t stand in your face satire). But the game is fun, so people let it slide, the anti woke crowd have really low standards when it comes to ideological rigor, it’s all about vibes.
Destroying a popular franchise that lacks wokeness is quite different.
okay so the franchise needs to be largely apolitical or have themes that are generally agreeable or non divisive then when they pick a hardline in one direction or the other would be when they “go woke?” For Example Battlefield franchise went “woke” but not broke yet, Something like Baldurs Gate/Hades was already some degree of woke, but then Alan Wake 2 not recouping its epic investment would be an example of going woke and then going broke?
How is battlefield doing good? Have you seen the state of 2042?
You mean state of the game stability or state of sales? Because it’s 2 different things.
sales
That’s debatable, since those are multimedia franchises with plenty of wokeness already injected, mostly in comic format. Maybe stuffing live service and being buggy is more to blame.
Let it burn baby, let it all burn!
1. Game Publisher sees trend (gaas, live service, battle royale…etc) making money for other publishers
2. Game publisher want to replicate that success without knowing / researching why said trend succeeded for that game and for that publisher
3. Game publisher proceeds to force a studio of theirs that have no previous experience or success with said trend to make a game in that trend with impossible deadline
4. Game studio start a messy development with something they never did before
5. Game studio top talents start leaving midway project to their dissatisfaction with the project
6. Game studio scrambles to finish the game to hit the arbitrary deadline that satisfies the publisher perceived good earning window
7. Game is released in a terrible state and mixed reviews
8. Game studio rushes to finish the game after launch
9. Game reception keep going down and the mixed reviews alienate even more customers who were thinking about purchasing the game
10. 3 months passed and Game publisher write off the game as a flop
11. Game publisher start laying off people or closing down the studio entirely
wonder why you want to become a gamedeveloper by then
Are they blaming toxic white males yet?
They literally became the Suicide Squad for their own company, they did the hole for themselves and should only blame themselves
I zero fcuks to give for WB as a company. I would say WB should stick to making movies, but they cant even get that right as of late. But what is sad, is how another game studio has been fcuked over and will be probably disapear. GaaS = bad, Sp(w/ no online b$) = good.
Those ESG bucks must feel great now for WB, f*ck them and Rocksteady.
the gameplay sucks tennis balls, true, but this also needs to be said — you will probably never hear more obnoxious / more nonstop / less funny “jokes” in a piece of major media. it’s nonstop and appalling. I don’t even recommend YouTubing it. it’ll likely just make you annoyed and less happy than you were before watching.
you’ll also rarely experience something with less respect for that big one thing it says it MOST is – a comic book story in a famous shared universe story starring beloved characters.
I’ll just say this so I won’t spoil the “”””fun””””: The Flash, Golden Shower, Post-Mortem. yeah. I can’t think of many products more deserving of cultural ridicule and broad financial failure.
HA HA HA Now don’t renew your license with Denuvo.