News How Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League Failed. A Major Investigation by Jason Schreier

How Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League Failed. A Major Investigation by Jason Schreier

June 6, 2024, 04:53 PM

Jason Schreier has released a comprehensive investigation into the reasons behind the failure of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. The Bloomberg journalist spoke with more than 20 Rocksteady employees who wished to remain anonymous.

The development of Suicide Squad was difficult and accompanied by constant delays. The game failed for a number of reasons, including constantly changing concepts, a culture of «rigid perfectionism,» and a genre that was unsuitable for the studio;
Warner Bros. has long seen a goldmine in the DC franchise. After the release of Suicide Squad movie in 2016, management wanted a game about the band of villains;
At that time, Warner Bros. Montreal was already working on Suicide Squad, but the corporation decided to raise the stakes and hand over the game to the best team — Rocksteady Studios. The original authors went on to make Gotham Knights;
Rocksteady Studios wanted to change direction after releasing Batman: Arkham Knight. Before Suicide Squad, they were working on a prototype online puzzle game codenamed Stones;
At the end of 2016, Rocksteady co-founder Sefton Hill informed employees that they would start working on Suicide Squad. At the meeting, Hill stated that he believed releasing an action game was a better idea than creating something new from scratch. The release was planned for 2019 or 2020;

Warner Bros. convinced the studio to make a live-service game by arriving at the office with a bunch of presentations;
Rocksteady had no experience in creating live-service games, so they had to expand. Over the past few years, the staff grew from 160 to over 250 people. Compared to the team behind Destiny 2's development, this is very small;
In the early days, the studio kept the development of Suicide Squad under strict secrecy, so many potential employees were greatly surprised to learn that Rocksteady was working on a multiplayer project. Many of them eventually left the studio;
Initially, the game focused on melee combat, but over time, the emphasis shifted to shooting. Many employees were unhappy with this decision, as their characters (with the possible exception of Deadshot) fight with completely different weapons;
In August 2020, the studio announced the game and set the release for 2022. Developers tried to meet the deadline and prioritized short-term fixes, but the release date was constantly pushed back;
Sometimes employees waited weeks or months for Sefton Hill to review their work. This further slowed development and undermined morale;

Sefton Hill could tear out entire chunks of the script and change the game's vision, although he himself admitted that he had little experience with live-service games;
At some point, Hill decided to add vehicles to the game, which confused developers even more. After several months of trial and error, they were removed;
According to some of Schreier's interlocutors, the main problem with Suicide Squad was that live-service games need to be designed so that repetitive battles and quests remain engaging even after many hours. Rocksteady, however, was accustomed to telling stories suitable for single-player games;
Developers were very concerned about the state of the game, but management believed that everything would come together at the last moment, as it did with Batman Arkham;
Some employees used the term «toxic positivity» to describe the company's culture, which did not encourage criticism. Management apparently wasn't even worried about the failures of other live-service games: Anthem, Marvel's Avengers, Redfall;
Warner Bros. management liked the game. The company praised the graphics and expected Suicide Squad to bring in a billion dollars;

Hill and Walker founded the studio Hundred Star Games and are working on a single-player project funded by Microsoft. In conversations with potential recruits from Rocksteady, they promised that they would be able to make a game without pressure from large corporations;
Suicide Squad was released in February 2024 and was a resounding failure. Despite this, Warner Bros. did not lay off staff, as they needed a large team of employees;
Currently, Rocksteady is helping with an unannounced «director's» version of Hogwarts Legacy. The leaders plan to work on a new single-player game that will bring Rocksteady back to its roots.

Eduard Zamikhovsky

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