Rocksteady, the developer behind the Batman Arkham games and most recently, Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League, has reportedly suffered major layoffs at the hands of publisher Warner Bros.
This information comes from Eurogamer, who says that Rocksteady staff have informed the outlet of "redundancies at the studio", including the team's QA department - which has apparently been "almost cut in half over the past month".
Somewhat shockingly, the report also says WB management has acknowledged that "product quality will now suffer as a result", but it decided to lay off multiple staff anyway. These layoffs include those aforementioned QA job losses, alongside casualties at other parts of the studio.
This isn't the first bit of bad news we've heard in relation to Suicide Squad: KTJL. Another report from way back in January claimed that the live service title had "lost $200 million" in development costs - that time coming from sources close to Bloomberg.
As of right now, we haven't heard anything from Warner Bros. directly on this news, which of course should be taken into account here. Oh, and for what it's worth, we actually quite liked this game when we played it back in early 2024. It's a shame that it doesn't appear to have been much of a success for those involved!
Well, folks, who saw this coming? Tell us if you've played the game and what you make of it down below.
[source eurogamer.net]
Comments 14
Hopefully companies start realising with this and concord nobody wants live service games such a shame they went from the arkham masterpiece games to this garbage I don't want anyone lose there jobs but live service games need to die
@Dan1283 The trouble is many DO want live service games. Look at the most played games every month it's wall to wall live services (Fortnite, COD, Genshin, GTA, CSGO, Apex, HSR, Minecraft, Roblox, Sports titles, PUBG) with the occasional single player games thrown in. And the successful ones make obscene amounts of money.
It's not that "nobody wants live service games", it's that they didn't want these ones. But I agree it's a travesty that Rocksteady were seemingly made to create one and are now suffering because of it.
Nobody wants new live service games when they are aping existing ones.
Mmorpgs were a GaaS frontrunner, and it took over 10 years and Billions of wasted dollars before the industry realized people wouldn't stop playing World of Warcraft to play their World of Warcraft clone.
They haven't realized that people are just as entrenched in Destiny, Fortnite, CoD etc. as they were in WoW and so we continue to see the mistakes of 2 decades ago.
The unfortunate result isn't going to be what people think it is ("ha! We won, now they'll go back to making single player games!"). The industry will consolidate and more development will move away from pc/console and towards mobile. We're not eating the dogs*** they're serving so they're just going to serve it to someone else.
@Jenkinss @Dan1283 Problem is the companies know most of their LS games are going to die, it's that gambler mentality as they just need one to stick and start earning that Fortnite money.
Everytime something like Helldivers doesn't shrivel up in a few months after launch they think theirs still a chance for a mega-hit that'll print money for the next 15 years.
That sucks. I hope those impacted land on their feet.
Give us another mainline none vr Arkham game please ...none of this Gotham Knights or Suicide Squad plop
It's so simple
@themightyant Current live service games didn't begin as them, to the best of my knowledge. Fortnite didn't start as one, it was just a hail mary toss to copy PUBG's success but free to play, and it took off.
Starting a game from the jump as a "service" is what kills the game.
Also, I feel bad for the devs who got laid off. Rotten corporate world, where they keep their paychecks but fire people who had no choice with the decision of making XYZ.
@Jenkinss I kinda agree, except WoW DID get competition in FFXIV, ESO and other MMORPGS that stuck around. You don't have to topple the king to be successful.
Destiny is faltering right now and is probably one that can be toppled if the right FPS game arrived.
More recently Honkai Star Rail (2023), Wuthering Waves , Zenless Zone Zero (both 2024) and much more are making tens of millions every month on mobile alone let alone PC and console.
@Elbow that may be true of a few but not most. Most were planned. But I agree about rotten corporate greed.
lol. Too bad. Should have made what people wanted instead of this absolute garbage.
@StylesT Not gonna lie, I am over the moon with hype for Arkham Shadow. Just wish it was on PC, at least through Quest Link, so I could use my VR treadmill with it.
If it is as good as their Iron Man VR game, it'll be a blast.
@InterceptorAlpha Yeah one vr game I would defo buy day one for my psvr 2 if it came to it....
@themightyant the issue is that it's much harder for these kinds of games to gain any traction, due to their nature of requiring significantly more of your time than single player games. So whilst there is a very large market for them, most of those customers already have the ones they want to play and are unlikely to change.
Sure some new successes can happen, such as Palworld and there's probably mobile stuff I'm not aware of but the problem here is the AAA market to treat them like a major release. Making them with these huge budgets, which is just mind blowingly stupid at this point as the likes of Anthem, Avengers, Suicide Squad and now Concord are all basically dead or about to be, whilst losing a ton of money in the process.
@carlos82 Completely agree. I didn't say that the market isn't overcrowded, it is harder to gain traction. I was only pushing back on the nonsense that "nobody wants live service games" when all data shows us the complete opposite is true.
@themightyant Of the hundreds of competitors that sprung up, it's telling that the two you came up with not only had absolutely massive built in fanbases, but were still enormous flops on their releases.
Leave A Comment
Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...