To the surprise of no one who so much as saw a trailer for the villain-led live service nightmare, Warner Bros. Discovery has admitted that Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League has not only been a sales disaster, but its bombing is also set to have a detrimental effect on the performances video game division.
The failure of Rocksteady’s widely-panned Arkham series follow-up was first officially confirmed by Warner Bros. Discovery Chief Financial Officer Gunnar Wiedenfels on February 23rd amidst the company’s Q4 2023 earning calls.
Providing investors with a rough outlook of what they could expect financially from the company’s Studio segment – which primarily handles its film, television, licensing, and interactive gaming operations – in the coming year, Wiendenfels explained of their video game prospects specifically, “We are lapping the release of Hogwarts Legacy in February last year, which saw the largest portion of its very positive financial impact in the first quarter. This year, Suicide Squad [Kill the Justice League], one of our key video game releases in 2024, has fallen short of our expectations since its release earlier in the quarter, setting our games business up for a tough year-over-year comp in Q1.”
Further, the CFO also revealed that their Studio segment’s finances would not even have a chance to fully recover from Suicide Squad‘s more-than-disappointing-performance before they would take another hit, as “on the film side, Q1 will be burdened with the marketing campaigns for Dune [Part] Two and Godzilla vs. Kong, which opens at the very end of the quarter.”
As noted above, this disastrous outcome for Rocksteady’s latest outing comes as very little surprise given the abysmal quality of its every aspect (save maybe its models and animation, which for all of the game’s failings, admittedly look fantastic in action).
From its repetitive and boring mission design, to its aggressively obnoxious UI design, to the exorbitant prices of its microtransactions (some costume bundles cost upwards of $25 real world dollars), to its terribly written narrative, to its shameless disregard for the very trilogy of titles that made its existence possible in the first place, the list of issues present within Kill the Justice League is one of the lengthiest and most damning in video game history.
And that’s not just the opinion of the jaded video game player writing this article.
Rather, as evidenced by the fact that the game has managed to pull in a peak Steam concurrent player count of just 13,459 – less than half of the peak experienced by fellow superhero-themed live-service title Marvel’s Avengers – it’s one shared by the vast, vast majority of players.
In other words, the game is bad, and its poor sales performance is a reflection of this fact.
Ultimately, whether or not WBD can turn their video game division’s luck around – either through a miraculous revamping of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice à la Final Fantasy XIV or the potential success of a future release – remains to be seen (though, let’s be honest: the former is insanely unlikely).
NEXT: ‘Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League’ Reviews Are In: “Absolutely Not Worth The Wait”