A new report claims that Rocksteady is cutting back its support for Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League after the game failed to attract an audience and could not sustain the few players that did purchase it.
Harley Quinn in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League (2024), Rocksteady
This latest report comes from Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier in the wake of a report he made claiming to reveal why the game was such a failure. Schreier indicated in his initial report that the game failed due to “a constantly shifting vision, a culture of rigid perfectionism and a genre pivot that was ill-suited for the studio.”
Of note, Schreier did not mention the Sweet Baby Inc. detected Steam curator list, which is the second most popular list on Steam with nearly 400,000 followers, or the ongoing boycott of AAA games called for by Mark Kern aka Grummz in April.
A screenshot from Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League (2024), Rocksteady
Nevertheless, Schreier claims that Rocksteady is only providing “barebones support” now. He adds that it is “definitely not as much as they’d originally planned.”
Jason Schreier on X
Not only is Rocksteady allegedly only supplying barebones support for the game, but Schreier also claimed in his original report that the company’s employees “are now helping to develop a new ‘director’s cut’ version of Hogwarts Legacy.”
However, he did note that the company is planning “to pitch a new single-player game, which would return Rocksteady to its roots.”
Amanda Waller in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League (2024), Rocksteady
This report from Schreier comes in the wake of a rumor from Vara Dark claiming that Warner Bros. might shut down Rocksteady following the game’s poor performance.
She detailed, “Warner Bros is internally talking about closing Rocksteady or halving their 250 employees after Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League’s bomb.”
Dark continued, “I have heavily covered Warner Bros Games and Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League since release because of what it represented for Warner Bros Games and a beloved franchise. When it was greenlit, we were seeing a giant scramble for studios to create live-service games and this one released too late plus the content did not resonate with players.”
A scene from Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League (2024), Rocksteady
Furthermore, she noted, “Rocksteady Studios’ co-founders and studio heads also departed the company back in 2022. Rocksteady is a shell of the company it used to be and we saw this happen recently with Embracer Group and Volition, a company that had 30 years of experience under their belt and it sounds as though Warner Bros is planning to pull the plug on Rocksteady, too. ”
“They have no other games publicly announced and there does not seem to be any confidence in them anymore. Even back in 2016 we got the Batman: Arkham VR game that was developed by Rocksteady and the new Batman: Arkham Shadow VR game is being done by Camouflaj. Only time will tell. Doesn’t seem like the future is very bright for Rocksteady,” she concluded.
While I do not usually speak on insider information I receive, I think this is one we all have pieced together ourselves. Warner Bros is internally talking about closing Rocksteady or halving their 250 employees after Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League’s bomb.
Just last…
— Vara Dark (@Vara_Dark) June 6, 2024
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League was lampooned out of the gate with YouTuber Endymion putting a significant portion of the blame on the company hiring controversial DEI consultant Sweet Baby Inc. and writers like Amy-Leigh Shaw, who is now employed by Sweet Baby Inc.
He said a week after the game released, “Of course, Amy tries to take the moral high ground here, but the truth is that the damage is done and what her and the team over at Sweet Baby has done to Suicide Squad not to mention other games like Spider-Man 2 and more. Everything they touch lessens and cheapens the stories and characters within them. It’s gotten so bad that the name Sweet Baby is all but considered a taboo term. It’s just as bad as when customers label a product as woke now.”
“Now, openly stating your game has any relations to Sweet Baby has become code for people to avoid that product entirely like the plague because chances are whatever your game is, if Sweet Baby is involved, it’ll be ruined and made into a pandering mess to some capacity,” he added.
Not only was it lampooned, but the player base did not show up at all. According to Steam DB, the game had an all-time concurrent peak number of players on February 3rd with 13,459. It quickly dropped to below 500 in a month.
There was a slight boost up to 3,042 when the game released its first DLC featuring the Joker. But it has since dropped even further with the most recent 24-hour concurrent peak topping off at 234.
Furthermore, the game only sold between 127,600 units and 260,000 units on Steam.
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League Steam DB charts
The game’s poor performance was confirmed in the company’s first quarter earnings results webcast by Warner Bros. Discovery’s Chief Financial Officer Gunnar Wiedenfels who said, “Starting with Studios, the $400 million+ year-over-year decline during Q1 was primarily due to the very tough comp we faced in games against the success of Hogwart’s Legacy last year in the first quarter, in conjunction with the disappointing Suicide Squad release this past quarter, which we impaired, leading to a $200 million impact to EBITDA during the first quarter.”
Weidenfels had previously detailed during the company’s fourth quarter 2023 earnings webcast, “This year, Suicide Squad, one of our key video game releases in 2024, has fallen short of our expectations since its release earlier in the quarter, setting our games business up for a tough year-over-year comp in Q1.”
A scene from Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League (2024), Rocksteady
What do you make of this report that Rocksteady is only providing barebones support now?
