It hasn’t even been a month since its release, but publisher Warner Bros. Games is disappointed in its live-service shooter Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. With barely 1,000 people playing the game on Steam, the company has flat-out stated that Suicide Squad completely missed its purported expectations.
Speaking to shareholders during a February 23 earnings call, Warner Bros. Discovery chief financial officer Gunnar Wiedenfels discussed Rocksteady’s latest action-adventure game. He didn’t provide any sales figures for Suicide Squad, but Wiedenfels admitted the game didn’t perform as well as the company had hoped for, particularly when compared to Hogwarts Legacy’s meteoric success.
“We are lapping the release of Hogwarts Legacy in February last year, which saw the largest portion of its very positive financial impact in the first quarter,” Wiedenfels said. “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.”
Rocksteady is a studio that made a name for itself with the beloved Arkham series, a franchise so seminal to the industry that its combat mechanics inspired hit games like Marvel’s Spider-Man and Sleeping Dogs. The Arkham games are gritty, single-player affairs that feature a dense Gotham worth exploring. By comparison, Suicide Squad, a live-service game that has more in common with WB Games Montréal’s Gotham Knights than Arkham Knight, feels like a hollowed-out repository for daily challenges and weekly events. It’s not terrible. It’s just not great either, and relies more on constant engagement than fulfilling gameplay. Kotaku’s own Zack Zwiezen put it succinctly in his review:
In the end, Suicide Squad is just…okay. Fine. Not amazing. Not a trainwreck. Folks wanting this game to be a complete disaster will be disappointed to discover a totally fine shooter that only succumbs to live-service corruption at the end. And for folks wanting something they can play for years, well, I hope you like shooting purple crystals over and over.
Suicide Squad is a poster child for the kind of games that live between great and awful. While that might be enough for some, I can’t imagine the devs who worked hard on Suicide Squad (or publisher WB, who footed the bill for the game) wanted it all to end with what amounts to a shrug emoji. Yet, here we are. At least the shotguns are cool.
Kotaku has reached out to Warner Bros. for comment.
Maybe the ship will get turned around and Suicide Squad will hit Warner Bros.’ benchmarks. After all, the endgame plans sound promising and new playable characters—Joker and Mr. Freeze (maybe?)—will join the roster soon. It’s never too late for a game to get good. I just wish Suicide Squad was enjoyable off the rip.
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