Ah, Labor Day, that good ol’ American holiday meant to appreciate workers nationwide – or, if you’re Rocksteady Studios, making sure some of them no longer have jobs, as according to a new report, the failure of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League has led the developer to begin scaling back their operations.
Per a report published by Eurogamer Editor-in-Chief Tom Phillips, who himself purportedly learned of the development from studio employees who spoke to him directly, Rocksteady “has seen its size almost cut in half over the past month”, dropping “from 33 team members to 15, with poor sales of Suicide Squad directly cited as a reason for its ‘restructuring’.”
Further, alongside the QA employees, the job cuts have also resulted in the loss of “numerous junior staff, but also several team members employed at Rocksteady for more than five years.”
In adding insult to injury, per a message posted to a social media platform, one staff member was reportedly let go over the weekend while in the middle of their paternity leave (as of writing, the specific employee, nor their relevant social media post, have been identified).
According to said employees, the cuts made to Rocksteady’s QA department affected a number of “team members with specialised knowledge”, a result which will in turn purportedly require remaining employees to shoulder additional work as they attempt to rebuild.
As of writing, neither Rocksteady Studios nor their parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, have offered any public comment regarding these staffing reductions.
Notably, these cuts come a little under a month after the aforementioned WBD reported that the abysmal Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League had led to a double-digit decline in their gaming revenue.
As detailed by the company in their Q2 2024 earnings report, their overall studio revenues for the quarter compared to the same period the year prior “decreased 4% [excluding drops resulting from changes in foreign currency exchange rates]” due to struggles in their TV, theatrical, and video game studios.”
“TV revenue declined 27%, primarily driven by the timing of initial telecast productions as well as lower licensing sales,” reported WBD. “Theatrical revenue increased 19% ex-FX, primarily due to higher home entertainment revenue from Dune: Part Two, and higher box office carryover due to the performance of Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, which was released at the end of March.”
Further, the company admitted that their “games revenue declined 41% , primarily driven by the weak performance of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League this year, compared to the strong performance of Hogwarts Legacy in the prior year.”
Speaking to this revenue drop during the company’s accompanying Q2 2024 earnings presentation, WBD CFO Gunnar Wiendenfels admitted that the widely-panned DC outing was a major reason for their financial failings.
“Now turning to studios, we enjoyed healthy theatrical revenue growth despite underperformance of recent releases, and aided by strong carryover from Q1 releases,” said the exec. “Experiences in consumer product revenues continued to perform nicely, and we remain very upbeat about the opportunity we see in better coordinating processes around managing franchises. Television was down, particularly as we worked through the last of the strike-delayed delivery, which sets us up for a big swing up in the second half. While, as we’ve called out last quarter, games are still struggling against last year’s Hogwarts Legacy comp, and a muted response to Suicide Squad this year.”
