Seeking to wright their sinking ship following their recent storm of failures, WB Games has announced that in order to restore their operations “back to profitability”, they will officially be pulling the plug on three of their subsidiary studios, including MultiVersus creators Player First Games, the now-cancelled Wonder Woman game developer Monolith Productions, and their San Diego-based support team.
Word of this massive operational shake-up was first broken by Bloomberg‘s Jason Schreier on February 24th, who learned of the development via his own insider sources, before being publicly confirmed by WB Games themselves later that same day.
Pressed for comment on Schreier’s scoop by Kotaku‘s Ethan Gach, the publisher responded with a definitive statement confirming, “We have had to make some very difficult decisions to structure our development studios and investments around building the best games possible with our key franchises – Harry Potter, Mortal Kombat, DC and Game of Thrones. After careful consideration, we are closing three of our development studios – Monolith Productions, Player First Games and Warner Bros. Games San Diego. This is a strategic change in direction and not a reflection of these teams or the talent that consists within them.”
Futher, in light of the Middle-Earth: Shadow of duology developer’s closure, WB Games further noted that “The development of Monolith’s Wonder Woman video game will not move forward.”
“Our hope was to give players and fans the highest quality experience possible for the iconic character, and unfortunately this is no longer possible within our strategic priorities,” they said. “This is another tough decision, as we recognize Monolith’s storied history of delivering epic fan experiences through amazing games. We greatly admire the passion of the three teams and thank every employee for their contributions. As difficult as today is, we remain focused on and excited about getting back to producing high-quality games for our passionate fans and developed by our world class studios and getting our Games business back to profitability and growth in 2025 and beyond.”
Adding his thoughts on the situation via an internal staff memo, as obtained and recapped by Schreier, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO and President of Global Streaming JB Perrette admitted, “The quality of too many of our new releases has really missed the mark.”
“We need to make some substantial changes to our portfolio/team structure if we are to commit the necessary resources to get back to a ‘fewer but bigger franchises’ strategy,” he added.
Notably, Player First Games’ official shut down comes just a few weeks after they announced that the one and only game to the credit, the WB-IP-inspired Super Smash Bros. clone MultiVersus, received its own end of service announcement.
And despite their development history being of a far higher pedigree, having been responsible for such fan favorites as The Operative: No One Lives Forever, as well as the F.E.A.R., Condemned, and aforementioned Middle-earth: Shadows of duologies , the situation is largely the same for Monolith Productions, as their pink slipping follows a brutal report from Schreier earlier this month detailing the absolute disaster that is – or, rather, was – Wonder Woman’s development cycle.
“One of the company’s biggest bets in development, a video game based on Wonder Woman, has struggled to coalesce, according to people familiar with the project,” wrote the Bloomberg reporter on February 7th. “Early last year, it was rebooted and switched directors. The game has already cost more than $100 million, said the people who asked not to be identified discussing nonpublic information, and is still years away from release, if it ever makes it to market.”
As for WB Games San Diego, not much can be said of its short-lived existence.
Founded in 2019, the Southern California studio produced absolutely zero games during its six-years of operation, with absolutely zero public details regarding their work ever being released (though guessing by the studio’s repeated use of an unidentified Batman model in their recruitment postings, speculation suggests it may have had something to do with the Caped Crusader).
At current, WB Games’ next (and possibly last) hope for a financial win is set to be Avalance Studios’ currently in development Hogwarts Legacy 2, which as of writing has yet to receive an official release date.