Rocksteady’s Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League game was a flop for Warner Bros. due to multiple issues resulting in a tumultuous development.
That’s according to a new report from Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier, which details a culture of perfectionism, an ill-suited genre pivot, and a constantly shifting vision as key reasons for the live-service game’s failure.
During an earnings call last month, Warner Bros. revealed it had taken a $200m loss on Suicide Squad, while earlier in the year the company’s chief financial officer Gunnar Wiedenfels stated the release had “fallen short of our expectations”.
After Rocksteady’s third Batman: Arkham game, the studio initially began work on an original multiplayer puzzle-solving game codenamed Stones. But at the end of 2016, staff were told by studio co-founders Jamie Walker and Sefton Hill that the team would shift to making Suicide Squad. Hill explained this as a better opportunity than making something from scratch, with the intention of it releasing in 2019 or 2020. As we now know, however, it subsequently received multiple delays.