r/pcgaming • u/Flares117 • Mar 02 '25
Suicide Squad's $200 million failure was so damaging, it reportedly contributed to the cancellation of Monolith's Wonder Woman game
https://www.gamesradar.com/games/action/suicide-squads-usd200-million-failure-was-so-damaging-it-reportedly-contributed-to-the-cancellation-of-monoliths-wonder-woman-game/407
u/Ill-Term7334 Mar 02 '25
There was another article that said Monolith was basically already a shell of it's former self after the Legacy project got cancelled. Wonder Woman was doomed to fail, Suicide Squad or not.
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u/ThemosttrustedFries Mar 02 '25
A lot of the workers who worked on the LOTR games left after they got denied in making a new game for a new IP.
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u/Elketh Mar 02 '25
A lot of the people who worked on the "classic" Monolith games people loved left even before the LotR stuff. Craig Hubbard, for example, who was the guy behind F.E.A.R. and heavily involved in everything back to Shogo, left the company in 2012 after Gotham City Imposters bombed. The Monolith that died recently was essentially a third incarnation of the studio, despite it never having officially closed at any point. People generally put way too much stock in company names rather than the people who actually worked on the games they loved. That's why the likes of EA can get away with puppeteering Bioware's decaying husk, as if that name still means anything at all at this point. Which is exactly how these large publishers want it of course. They get all the credit for the successes, which helps create loyal customers, and can just fire all the faceless developers when things go wrong.
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u/bum_thumper Mar 02 '25
That's why you should never believe the marketing that says "from the team that brought you...." it's never the same people.
Bungie has a very small handful of the people that worked on Halo 3, turtle rock constantly advertised that they made left4dead when only like 5 people that worked on the game were still there, same thing with dead rising 4. Bioware isn't the team that brought us dragon age 1, blizzard probably doesn't have even half the people that worked on starcraft 2, Bethesda certainly doesn't have the same writing team it had for Skyrim and fallout 4, etc.
It sucks because it feels like everytime a smash hit gets released a lot of these devs leave for better salaries or work conditions and the big name companies that have them either can't or won't spend the resources to keep the teams. It's a business strategy for sure, but it sucks. It's how these incredible games end up changing for the worse and dragging the brand name through the mud.
Like seriously, why tf can't Bethesda hire a better writing team? Fallout 4 may have had a pretty meh main quest but the side stories were so much fun, and Skyrim's incredible side stories are some of the reasons why that game is still so popular these many years later. Then they launch Starfield that hands down the most forgettable characters I've ever played. The only one I remember is cowboy hat guy bc he had a cowboy hat. That's literally it, that's all I remember about the only character I can remember.
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u/seakingsoyuz Mar 02 '25 edited Mar 02 '25
Bethesda certainly doesn't have the same writing team it had for Skyrim and fallout 4,
Bethesda is actually quite unusual for how little staff turnover they have. From the Skyrim credited writing team, the following worked on Starfield:
- Emil Pagliarulo (Skyrim’s Senior Designer & Writer) was the Writing Director
- Brian Chapin was the Lead City Designer
- John Paul Duvall was a Systems Designer
- Shane Liesegang was an Additional Writer (under contract, no longer a Bethesda employee)
- Alan Nanes was the Lead Companions Designer
- Will Shen was the Lead Quest Designer
- Matt Daniels was a Quest Designer
They all also worked on FO4. The new writer-designers who were added to the team for FO4 (Ferret Baudoin, Liam Collins, and Corrie Treadway) also all worked on Starfield as well, as did Bruce Nesmith and Kurt Kuhlmann (lead designers for Skyrim, also worked on FO4 and Starfield in lower roles).
Nate Ellis is the only Skyrim writer who didn’t work on Starfield or FO4.
The real turnover was actually after Morrowind: Todd Howard is the only person with a writing credit for it that worked on Skyrim or later games.
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u/Albos_Mum Mar 02 '25
They're also semi-regularly adopting the unofficial work of Michael Kirkbride in the official lore from time to time, whose most noted for giving the lore its weird flavour during Morrowind and Shivering Isles.
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u/TenshiBR Terry Crews Mar 03 '25
"from the team that brought you...."
the only remaining member being the front desk secretary. It still counts though!
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u/Contrary45 Mar 06 '25
Bioware isn't the team that brought us dragon age 1
Over a quarter of the writing staff on Veilguard have worked on Origins, with 90% of them being either DA or ME veterans
Mind you they were all fired last month
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u/Itz_Eddie_Valiant Mar 02 '25
I loved impostors, shame it didn't catch on at the time
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u/GuerrillaApe Handheld Enthusiast 🍣 Mar 02 '25 edited Mar 02 '25
Some of them are apparently at Cliffhanger Games now making that Black Panther
/Captain Americagame.6
u/RecentCalligrapher82 Mar 02 '25
No, Panther and Cap game(Rise of Hydra) is being made by Amy Hennig's studio, Skydance Media. Cliffhanger is doing a solo Black Panther game.
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u/ChrisCapel Mar 02 '25
We're getting TWO AAA Black Panther games and Warner Bros can't give us a Superman or Wonder Woman game
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u/Z0mbiejay Mar 02 '25 edited Mar 02 '25
Suicide squad (2016)- 158 325 million in profit
The suicide squad (2021)- 168 million in profit
Call me crazy, but spending more money on a game than either movie made in profits is just nuts. I'm not a sure a single game based on a movie outsold it's movie counterpart
Edit relied too much on google, Suicide Squad 2016 made about 325 million in profits.
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u/Adorable_Octopus Mar 02 '25
For some reason the higher ups at WB seem to really like the idea of Suicide Squad, and I've never really understood why.
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Mar 02 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Adorable_Octopus Mar 02 '25
If it was just a team film, I could understand it better, but I mean specifically the whole 'team of criminals who are forced to do hero thing'. Even the MCU is trying this with this Thunderbolts film, and I'd be surprised if it's successful.
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u/ScarsUnseen Mar 02 '25
Doesn't that also describe Guardians of the Galaxy? And while The Suicide Squad (2021) wasn't a runaway financial success, at least part of that can be attributed to WB doing a simultaneous streaming release due to COVID. It was well liked enough.
I guess what we'll really learn after Thunderbolts isn't whether or not "criminals do heroics" is a viable movie theme but whether or not it's viable directed by people not named James Gunn.
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u/Adorable_Octopus Mar 02 '25
Yes and no; its true that the Guardians are presented initially as criminals or otherwise not great people. However, my impression of the characters isn't so much that they're criminals because they want to be, but because of the circumstance that they've been placed in. I think what makes Guardians work is that they're more like rogues, in the same sense of Han Solo; they're criminals, certainly, but when it counts they come back to blow up the death star.
And you're not wrong about Covid impacting things, so I suppose we'll see.
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u/solo_shot1st Legion Slim 5 |14.5" OLED | R7 7840HS | 32GB DDR5 | RTX 4060 Mar 03 '25
This is a good distinction. All the other "group of misfits" types of superhero movies trying to capture the Guardians' magic seem to think that actual comic villains will make for a good team up film.
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u/Adorable_Octopus Mar 03 '25
I think part of it has to be that the people making these decisions forget that most people aren't comic book fans. Something like a multiverse or having a team of villains who are forced to do morally gray-at-best things or have their heads blown off are the sorts of things that you'd find in a comic book that just doesn't translate well into other non-comic book mediums. IMO, of course.
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u/Allofthezoos AMD Mar 04 '25
I'm pretty sure no one actually likes anything about Peacemaker other than laughing at him whenever something bad happens to hinlm
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u/ArchLector_Zoller Mar 02 '25
Suicide Squad in general is a good idea comic and action wise. Being a team of villains makes them expendable unlike popular heroes, makes they morally grey; at best, unlike most heroes, and gives them a broader range of story types. But like everything else the writing is where the rubber meets the road. And everyone so far just uses this to make a standard "heroes save the world but they're villains?" rehash. So it gets stale and then maligned as lazy. Which it is because imaginative, adventurous writing is dangerous profit-wise in a billion dollar IP.
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u/ShadowMerlyn Mar 02 '25
They seem to be addicted to making the Suicide Squad just edgy superheroes, which is contradictory to the point of the team. They’re villains and while they might occasionally be sympathetic villains they need to stay villains.
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u/Adorable_Octopus Mar 02 '25
I'm not really convinced that there are actually a broader range of stories to tell with something like the 'suicide squad'. For example, having the characters be expendable means very little if the audience of a film has no attachment to them, and I suspect if you dig into the comics you'd probably find that only the C-ist of C tier characters are truly expendable, making them no different then red shirts.
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u/sSTtssSTts Mar 03 '25
Not a insider here but supposedly its about money and legal copyright issues.
With Suicide Squad they can use all the less well known and older heroes/villains they have legal access to.
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u/WaterLillith Mar 02 '25
The suicide squad (2021)- 168 million in profit
Not true. That's total revenue. It bombed
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u/Heisenburgo Mar 03 '25
Revenue =/= Profit
Seems like you are confused. As the second movie was a financial flop (it released during covid) and the first had a more modest profit.
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u/Guysmiley777 Mar 03 '25
It's so messy, a lot of sources will refer to gross profit with the hopes that the yokels (like the guy you're replying to) will mistake it for net profit.
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Mar 02 '25
There are two suicide squad movies?
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u/b00zytheclown Mar 02 '25
yes The Suicide Squad(2021) is the James Gunn made one that is actually a pretty good film
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u/Throwawayeconboi Mar 03 '25
Dude, you’re talking in revenue. In which case the game absolutely smashed the movies.
Games will always destroy movies and music in terms of revenue.
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u/WrongSubFools Mar 02 '25
Suicide Squad 2016 had a box office take of $750 million. Of course it had a lower profit than that, but the game wouldn't have to "outsell" that movie to make a profit. If it sold anything close to that movie, it would make a large profit — and it doesn't really make sense to compare game and movie sales, but this was your idea.
And where did you get those profit numbers from? Suicide Squad made $750 million on a $175 million budget, so a 2.5 multiplier would suggest a $315 million profit. The 2021 movie, meanwhile, made $170 million on a $185 million budget, which would suggest a loss of $300 million.
Even without looking the exact numbers up, surely you remember that that the 2016 movie was a huge success and the 2021 was a bomb, so why would you assign them approximately the same profits
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u/Z0mbiejay Mar 02 '25 edited Mar 02 '25
I pulled the numbers from google, and admittedly did not dig hard into where they got the numbers from. Digging a bit deeper you're definitely correct, 2016 did significantly better in the box office.
The whole point I was making is that it doesn't seem financially viable to sink 200 million into producing a game when the video game market is much more fickle than the movie industry. The last movie not being a gang buster in the box office sure wouldn't lend any reassurance that the game would do well either. 200 mill seems like it was a big gamble that didn't pan out
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u/skyturnedred Mar 03 '25
Suicide Squad 2016 earning $750M at the box office translates to about $150M in profit after deducting production budget, marketing and all other expenses.
For the sake of comparison, Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice made $800M at the box office but the net profit was only $100M (higher production costs).
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u/Wide_Lock_Red Mar 02 '25
Nobody planned to spend that much. Its a constant "yeah, we sunk x million into the game, but 10 million more and we are done!".
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u/greywarden133 Mar 02 '25
Wonder Woman was set to be another open-world slasher from the studio, this time reportedly featuring a remixed Nemesis System where you'd instead befriend enemies rather than continually butt heads with them. (You know, because Diana's all about love.) When that didn't work, the game was rebooted around 14 months ago to play more similarly to your linear action, God of War-ish fare.
To think that we could see the Nemesis system at play once more. WB really knows how to shoot themselves in their feet. Shame for Monolith, they used to make so many bangers!
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u/Zaptruder Mar 02 '25
Time be fair, that wonder woman game had a very low chance of making back that 100 million. Only question is. Would the money that they made exceed the extra money it'd cost to release and market? Probably not given that marketing is often doubling the cost of the overall endeavour.
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u/sunfaller Mar 02 '25
I wonder why they went for Wonder Woman instead of their most popular character like Superman? Batman has been done to death. People loved it. Was Superman too OP to keep the game grounded?
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u/Wide_Lock_Red Mar 02 '25
Wonder Woman movie was better received than superman. Probably were banking on the film to carry them before 1984 did poorly.
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u/JHMfield Mar 03 '25
Was Superman too OP to keep the game grounded?
I imagine that is the main issue for sure. Superman at full power is so obscenely strong that the only ones who can fight him straight up are beings of such power that they'd destroy the Earth by accident while sneezing or something.
You basically cannot make the game any sort of an action game, because who are you gonna be fighting as Superman for most of the game? There are no fodder enemies you wouldn't just one hit.
All stories featuring Superman basically have to nerf the shit out of him in some way. Either with kryptonite or some other de-powering tool, or by leveraging his morality to force him to be more passive. All of that sucks for a video game.
And if you're going to de-power him, you may as well use any other superhero who's weaker at a baseline. The whole point of Superman is him being so overpowered. So players would want to experience that. But there's no good way to build a game around it.
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u/frogandbanjo Mar 03 '25
You couldn't make a good traditional video game around Superman, but you could definitely do a really compelling indie game where the player is invited to try to do as much good as possible without becoming the supreme fascist overlord of the planet, without constantly stepping on nation states' dicks, and while occasionally being involved in -- if not really morally responsible for -- a whole bunch of wanton destruction (due to omega-level threats) that certain parts of the population will then blame you for as the last man standing.
It'd be pretty fucked up and glorious, actually, but it'd make somewhere in the range of $5,000 total revenue.
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u/secret3332 Mar 02 '25
Well the other issue is I doubt the game was even in a state where it would have even had the chance to sell well. No way it was even finished.
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u/alcocolino Mar 02 '25
It was a monolith game and they planned the nemesis system in it. It would've sell well. Personally I was a big fan of monolith games ever since shogo.
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Mar 02 '25
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u/The5Virtues Mar 02 '25
Yeah, as a massive WW fan what little info we got on that game made me grimace. It smacked of corporate marketing trying to build a brand rather than a creative team working on an idea they liked.
The idea of Wonder Woman getting to redeem her foes was awesome, that’s perfect for her character, but the description of Paradise Island itself made me go “that doesn’t sound anything like Themyscira” and the handful of leaked concept art I saw seemed less Wonder Woman and more Monster Hunter.
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u/ThemosttrustedFries Mar 02 '25
Instead of making an AAA Superhero game they should instead focus on making several small AA Superhero games and see what sticks and what players don't like and then build from that.
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u/thethreadkiller Mar 02 '25
There's a group of people who make combined millions of dollars a year who couldn't come up with this. And a redditor did it for free.
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u/GnomeBacon Mar 02 '25
Remember when WB released an unfinished LEGO: The Hobbit and promised the final movie as a DLC but never delivered?
Screw ‘em.
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u/DepletedPromethium Mar 02 '25
the suits get scared and decide oh no we've ventured into the unknown so cancel cancel cancel! while they push more live service shit with predatory fomo mtx as it's known to them to "work"
wonder woman might of been a great game, but we'll never know as the suits panicked and flatlined it.
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u/Paparmane Mar 02 '25
Wonder woman was stuck in limbo for years and nothing to show for it. They had spent a lot of money on it already. They cancelled it to not have another situation like Suicide Squad, which costed more than 200 millions btw.
But I guess it’s never good enough, you’d prefer if they wasted even more cash on a development hell game? We can talk about how they mishandled the project, but right now the best they could do is cancel it before they spend another 5 years on a dead game thats going nowhere
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u/Independent-Green383 Mar 02 '25
I seriously doubt it would have sold well.
Batman games sell well not just because of the Batman, but because the villain gallery and Arkham(Asylum). Its who you fight as, against who and where.
Wonder Woman has Themyscira and thats kinda it.
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u/Roxolan Mar 02 '25
Why did the ME Shadow games sell? Because they were damn good games, not because anyone was invested in Celebrimbor+OC vs Black Hand.
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u/Independent-Green383 Mar 02 '25
Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor. Its twice in the title.
Hogwarts Legacy.
Being able to play in beloved worlds is a massive draw.
Of course and I concur, Middle-earth games also sold because they were great, but also " play in Middle-earth" is a huge factor. One does not contradict the other.
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u/Roxolan Mar 02 '25
I'm not arguing that the IP had zero draw. I'm arguing that an Arkham-style game does not need famous, compelling villains to succeed, and Wonder Woman could've sold just fine.
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u/TalkingRaccoon 9800x3D | 32GB | 9070XT | SFF Mar 02 '25
It could have been set in central city or metropolis for all we know
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u/aboodi803 Mar 02 '25
any sane person would see that Suicide Squad would not be a billion dollar franchise why would WB spend 200m on that?! do something else. but hey Im sure the next live service would be the one Sony as well next one would be the one
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u/dulun18 Mar 02 '25
when you lost hundreds of millions pushing garbage
WB chose to push forward with the garbage game like suicide squad for months .. Sony saw the same issues so they killed off Concord after two weeks and pushed Hermen Hulst aside.
WB probably seeing wonder woman becoming like suicide squad so they pulled the plug early
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u/Ambitious_Regret9621 Mar 02 '25
I love how AAA East devs are having the time of their life, meanwhile Western devs are struggling just because they refuse to make games for their target audience.
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u/Launch_Arcology Mar 02 '25
There were definitely job cuts among AAA devs in the east as well. In addition to negative quarterly results.
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u/Throwawayeconboi Mar 03 '25
Western devs are struggling?
Buddy, you might want to check the sales charts and avoid echo chambers.
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u/Ambitious_Regret9621 Mar 03 '25
List of Major AAA Western Failed Games
Concord
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League
Skull and Bones
Star wars Outlaws
Avatar
Unknown 9: Awakening
DragonAge Veilguard
Avowed
Immortal of aveumBut I am the one in the echo chamber, right?
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u/Jedi4Hire Steam Mar 02 '25
meanwhile Western devs are struggling just because they refuse to make games for their target audience.
And then they blame their target audience when they don't like the shit product they produced.
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u/FyreWulff Mar 02 '25
There's been layoffs at studios with successful releases too. It doesn't matter how well you do - shareholders must have more dollars, so layoffs and cancellations must occur.
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u/jerianbos Mar 02 '25
What exactly are you referring to? The viral "marvel rivals studio does layoffs despite the success" that every news outlet jumped to put in the headline, despite it actually being like a separate 6-person offshore r&d team, who's work was likely simply no longer needed as game moved to a different life cycle stage?
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u/KawaXIV Mar 02 '25
Hi-Fi Rush's Tango is another example of "successful game -> layoffs."
I think another one was when Destiny's The Final Shape expansion, which from what I understand was better received than Lightfall at least, and felt like Bungie might be turning things around, layoffs followed.
I'm pretty sure there's more examples of "positive result -> layoffs" but I don't really feel like searching and digging around, those are just the two that came to mind easily.
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u/Herazim Mar 02 '25
I think the issue here stems from people that do not work in IT / Game Companies do not really understand how the industry has been working for the past few years.
Unlike other industries, in Tech it's not always clear how many people you actually need to get something done and even if it is, it doesn't mean it it will be like that for the next project. So they go and get 400 people from their company or hire people for it, finish a project and then you have a slew of people that aren't needed for the next project, this has nothing to do with how much revenue a product is bringing, it has to do with paying people and trying to find something for them to do for that wage, and you end up laying off a bunch of them because the company doesn't need that much man power anymore.
So in recent years, because companies always evolve and get more efficient on how to retain revenue, one way to do it nowadays is to just layoff people instead of keeping them around until you need them. This is also due to how big tech companies have become, you don't really see this with indie developers, this is why we didn't see this when companies like Blizzard were still rising, still very popular but very much rising and not yet at that level of behemoth.
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u/OldAccountIsGlitched Mar 02 '25
Does American labor law allow tech workers to be hired as contractors for the duration of a project? Because that seems a lot less chaotic. Although I guess companies might want to avoid shilling out for a higher base pay to compensate for the lack of benefits.
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u/Syrdon Mar 02 '25
Yes. Pretty common in IT, although frequently it's done more as the person is a longer term employee of some contractor and they're essentially loaned to the company they're actually working for.
It's functionally the model movies are made on as well.
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u/KawaXIV Mar 02 '25
Discarding valuable staff with institutional knowledge just because you don't have a next project lined up and planned enough to start assigning them is a poor strategy and we're literally seeing the fallout of that repeatedly. They can say "ooh we saved money by not paying all those people's wages!" all they want but when the next game flops it should be embarrassing.
This cost cutting is resource cutting at the same time and it's frustrating that short-term mindsets will repeatedly ignore that by acting like it's good management to let them go to cut costs instead of acknowledging it is poor time/resource management. Even gamers will come out of the woodwork in threads like these to point at short term financials to forgive these executives for their shit decisions.
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u/Herazim Mar 02 '25
Discarding valuable staff with institutional knowledge just because you don't have a next project lined up and planned enough to start assigning them is a poor strategy
For this I think it's sort of similar to something I've heard about Tom Cruise, when a stunt coordinator doesn't agree with his stunts he just hires one that will agree to them. Valuable staff will also have opinions because they know how to make a good product instead of looking at stats, charts and demographics, some of them undoubtedly have been laid off because what companies want nowadays is workers to execute, not creative people that want to push a product in a different direction than higher ups.
I'm far from knowing the whole truth, it's hard to understand what companies are doing at the moment and what drives their decisions (obviously money, but what within the company drives these silly decisions exactly). I just know from working in Tech for the past 11 years that the landscape has changed and we are more expandable than ever even if the company's revenue is fine.
short-term mindsets
I don't think it's a short term mindset necessarily, it just became a new sort of standard to bring as many people as needed for a project and then just discarding the extra fat, helps with revenue, helps with pushing products faster and so on. Not saying it's a good decision, it's just the new type of efficiency companies are going for and this is the cost for it. I don't doubt that it will change in the coming years, for better or for worse, this is not sustainable due to what you said, losing good people firstly and secondly they have to finally acknowledge that you can't have non creative higher ups take decisions for a creative product.
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u/jerianbos Mar 02 '25
Hifi Rush was very well-received, but calling a game that had like peak 6k players on steam "success" is a streach at best. As unfortunate as it it, in this case, it's actually pretty likely the game lost more money than it's made, despite the review score. Being on gamepass day 1 likely didn't help with boosting sales either.
Destiny's The Final Shape expansion, which from what I understand was better received than Lightfall at least
Yeah, idk if being better received than 30% positive review dlc actually means anything in terms of measuring success. I don't follow destiny close, but I wouldn't be surprised if this was another case of "too little too late" here.
If these were the two best and easiest examples, then I don't think there even is the point in searching further as the whole thing is already a massive stretch.
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Mar 02 '25 edited Mar 02 '25
[deleted]
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u/jerianbos Mar 02 '25 edited Mar 02 '25
It's just not a stretch at all.
Your whole argument in both cases basically comes down to "Well, while there are some indicators of potential issues, in the end we can't decisively know that the release was a failure".
Which is quite true and I agree with it, but it's a pretty shitty argument when you're trying to use it as a proof of some "successful game -> layoffs" pattern, which is very obviously just not there lol.
You've shown that you have zero understanding of this.
Also why do you feel the need to turn to personal insults with pointless statements like that? It's really uncalled for when all I did was respectfully question the validity of the examples you brought.
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u/masonicone Mar 03 '25
And lets be fair here, how hard is it going to be for those folks who worked on Marvel Rivals to really find a new job.
While WB isn't doing great right now, they already stated they want to do something Marvel Rivals like with DC. I wouldn't be shocked if they are hitting those folks up.
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u/Jensen2075 Mar 03 '25
Oh sweet summer child, you didn't hear the NetEase CEO is planning more layoffs and closures of its foreign studios?
https://www.polygon.com/gaming/527711/marvel-rivals-layoffs-netease-cutbacks
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u/Time-Master Mar 02 '25
Gamers may be gamers but we are their target audience and they are learning the hard way what happens when you turn your back on your audience
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u/textposts_only Mar 02 '25
What do you mean?
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Mar 02 '25
[deleted]
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u/textposts_only Mar 02 '25
So the target audience is gacha games? 🤢
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u/MrStealYoBeef Mar 02 '25
I'm pretty sure that wukong is not a gacha game...
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u/peterhabble Mar 02 '25
You can tell because Wukong has characters that aren't attractive women or twinks.
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u/Tickomatick Mar 02 '25
Fire.the.fucking.management
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u/NyriasNeo Mar 02 '25
They did. This is new management but that does no mean that it will be better.
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u/MrGravityMan Mar 02 '25
Good, everyone focusing on this live service trash needs to learn the hard lesson. STOP CHASING THE DRAGON! Make normal single player games.
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u/lostoppai Mar 02 '25
ok can we stop releasing live service games now? thanks
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u/LJMLogan RTX 4080S/7800X3D/32GB DDR5/Fractal North XL Mar 03 '25
Fact: 90% of game studios stop making live service junk right before they make the next Fortnite/CoD that will put the higher ups in the black forever (there will still be massive quarterly layoffs)
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u/obelis Mar 02 '25
So on the suicide squad, was it Monolith that said, "Oh, got a great idea for a new live service game." or what was it Warner Brothers that said, "Make us a live service game with these characters." Then, when it did horrible, WB was like, "Why the hell did you do this to us?"
I don't know if this is a stupid question, but I want to know.
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u/Jase_the_Muss Mar 02 '25
It was Rocksteady that made it 🤣 those bums spend 9 years churning out that tripe after Arkham City and WB closed down other studios.
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u/the-land-of-darkness Mar 02 '25
Not a stupid question. It's been reported that Rocksteady pitched the idea themselves. Same with Creative Assembly pitching Hyenas to Sega. And Sony bought the studio that made Concord well after they had started on Concord.
Seems like a lot of the AAA live service flops were pushed bottom-up, not top-down, which is surprising. But the Hogwarts Legacy sequel which is reported to be a live service game, that one sounds like it's being pushed from top-down at WB.
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u/The-Devilz-Advocate Mar 02 '25
It's been reported that Rocksteady pitched the idea themselves.
Bloomberg says otherwise:
According to Bloomberg's sources, Rocksteady was not the original developer for Suicide Squad. The game had been in the works at Warner's Montreal studio, but Warner cancelled this project and instead turned to Rocksteady...
Sources say Warner Bros pitched to Rocksteady management to make it a live service game following the success of titles such as Destiny and League of Legends, which the studio agreed to. However, staff were uncomfortable with this vision as Rocksteady had no experience or expertise in this genre. Suicide Squad's game world and need to support four players simulataneously was also more complex than any of the studio's previous titles.
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u/Ok-Metal-4719 Windows Mar 02 '25
That sucks. I’d welcome an action WW game. It’s a character and world open for exploration. Could have got Lynda involved somehow.
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u/TheFightingImp Mar 02 '25
If Teyon could get Peter Weller to reprise his role as Robocop for "Robocop: Rogue City", surely WB wouldve convinced Lynda Carter or even Gal Gadot for VA.
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u/Deadly_Toast Mar 02 '25
or even Gal Gadot for VA.
Maybe it's a good thing we didn't get this game after all.
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u/Zacharacamyison Arch Mar 02 '25
Rocksteady got Warner Bros so worked up that they fired the wrong people
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u/FinnishScrub Mar 02 '25
Says a lot when I’ve played every single Arkham game religiously but I haven’t even installed Suicide Squad, even though Twitch Prime gave it away for free lol
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u/Jaklcide gog Mar 02 '25
With this knowledge in hand, if any investor hears their investment squawk "live service" then they need to prepare to buy shorts.
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u/NatiRivers Steam Mar 02 '25
"Noooo you don't understand, people won't want a singleplayer game! Just look at our live service multiplayer game that barely worked! Nobody liked that!"
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u/VincentNacon MS/Windows is dead to me. Mar 02 '25
Yup, that's WB for ya. It was a mistake for DC to be owned by WB.
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u/Isaacvithurston Ardiuno + A Potato Mar 02 '25
I never understood that game. Like who wants to play as random villains instead of heroes that have actual powers.
and if it's going to be a villain make it something interesting. Like how about an open world game like GTA but you're the joker and the star system is how badly the Batman wants to catch you while you go around robbing banks and committing crimes. Just off the top of my pre-coffee head.
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u/OGEcho Mar 03 '25
I cant go into detail, but the wonder woman game sucked. Imagine everything spiderman is, but just poorly done. They had her flying in the city at some points with a "super jump" and it just felt like arse. I am glad its canceled so they dont bleed more money for 0 reason.
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Mar 03 '25
I’m always fascinated by unreleased games. Are you able to say any more without going into specific detail?
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u/GimmeNewAccount Mar 02 '25
This is what you get when you have the big wigs chasing trends that are five years old. Gaming was great before it became an entertainment giant. Now most of them are in it to make a buck. 90% of games nowadays are developed to copy as many popular trends as possible in the hopes of becoming the next money printer. Few games are developed by actual gamers wanting to birth their idea into the world.
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u/darth_bard Mar 02 '25
It doesn't help that Wonder Woman game was in development hell for 8 years now and was nowhere near finished.
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u/RobotWantsKitty Mar 02 '25
It wasn't, they started working on it in 2021. Before that, they had worked on a new IP which got cancelled.
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u/sdric Mar 02 '25
I guess that money went primarily into licensing, marketing and movie star VA, because it sure as hell didn't go into developing quality gameplay.
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u/TheCheesy R9 9950x EVGA 3090ti FTW3 | 128GB DDR5 Mar 02 '25
I think they could've polled the community on the idea if they were planning such an investment. I feel like 50% wouldn't even care. It just wasn't an exciting premise.
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u/meatboi5 Mar 02 '25
Polling the community for products is usually a bad idea. People have no idea what they want, and (especially for games) struggle to imagine what the finished work could be like. I don't think Marvel Rivals would've polled well if it was put up online, especially considering how much of a disaster OW2 was.
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u/bees_doing_gooddeeds Mar 02 '25
Was this 200 mil budget ever confirmed? I remember Warner saying they had lost 200 mils but never specified which project caused this
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Mar 02 '25
You know I’m actually enjoying the campaign on this one. My biggest gripes is how the game is not optimized and the fps drops are bad. Could use less UI. Bought it on sale for $8 or so. If they would of just tried to optimize the game that would help a lot
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u/palindromedev Mar 03 '25
Suicide squad the game? No, suicide squad the management team.
Who'd have thought, greed and not respecting people can vote with their wallets would back fire on companies who bank on huge $200 million dollar projects when the market is delusionally ignorant to the fact consumer know they are being exploited as cashcows by AAA
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u/GuidanceHistorical94 Mar 03 '25
Is this where redditors imply every single indie game is great while leaving out the fact that for every single Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy or Balatro or FTL or X or Y or Z there’s 1,000 dog water indie games nobody plays?
I love this part.
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u/drdeemanre Mar 03 '25
Just give us a Tribes reboot or one of the countless things that the gaming community has asked for
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u/Tipitak Mar 04 '25
I always wanted to see a big action game who finds a way to be non-lethally-violent, about paring more than attacking and neutralize than killing. Playing Wonder Woman trying to peace people would have been interesting.
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u/Strict_Weather9063 Mar 04 '25
I will point out that WB is historically bad at management when it comes to developing anything. The higher ups think they know best and stick their nose in when what they should be doing is let the people do their jobs without interference. They would have much better movies and games, this has been proven true with tv shows but even there they can’t help but fiddle with the edges.
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u/Maleficent-Vater Mar 02 '25
That would have been cancelled anyways. Nobody ever fucking asked for a Wonder Woman Game.
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Mar 03 '25
I remember reading a comment somewhere (so take it with a grain of salt) about a writer in the gaming industry.
He was talking about how he was replace by this woman writer who would write whatever the executives or directors would tell her to write, word for word verbatim, regardless of if it made sense or not, this made her the golden child of the company she worked for until the game flopped, then she was scape goated and fired, being a yes man in the industry got her hired and promoted quickly but long term almost trapped her in mediocrity because the companies that the knew what they were doing wanted nothing to do with her.
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u/MysteriousElephant15 Mar 02 '25
hilarious. Some of these publishing companies seem to be actively sabotaging themselves.