Following many reliable reports published over a month ago, Warner Bros has confirmed Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League has been delayed. Originally due out for PS5 at the end of next month, it's been pushed all the way back to 2nd February 2024.
In a statement shared on Twitter, developer Rocksteady Studios said: "We have made the tough but necessary decision to take the time needed to work on getting the game to be the best quality experience for players. Thank you to our amazing community for the continued support, patience and understanding." It signs off by saying it'll have more news and information to share in the coming months.
Suggestions a significant delay was being prepared surfaced after a disastrous State of Play showing in February. The internet and discussion forums were flooded with disappointment from those potentially interested in the game, with complaints stemming from its live service aspects. However, it's been reported Suicide Squad won't be heavily changed despite this eight-month delay.
How do you react to this news? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
[source twitter.com]
Comments 61
Glad they decided not to go with the Cyberpunk route and actually delay the game by more than a month.
Will it change a whole lot? Probably not, but it shows that they'll at least make changes to please us.
Strange that I cancelled my preorder this morning and this happened. Think I’ll put the lottery on 🤣
If the reports of the delay not removing the live service elements are accurate, then this seems all for nothing. Yeah they’ll probably address some gameplay critiques, but the fundamental issues will still be there. Not to mention February is traditionally a hefty month for video game releases, and that a delay this long will only lead to people growing tired of its discussion—limiting word of mouth. Developers should always feel free to delay games, but they need to be wise with how they use the extra time.
I think Rocksteady may be doomed. This game is clearly never going to make back the insane investment they've put into it.
A delay wont save this one im afraid. They would have to strip out all the live service nonsense and fundamentally redesign the whole experience. 10 months wont touch the surface.
How on earth has this been allowed to happen. Rocksteady had developed a fantastic formula, but are now a shell of their former selves. Im sure its no coincidence that the studio heads have moved on
@get2sammyb Isn't it insane that these days one bad choice of project can essentially torpedo an entire (previously extremely successful) studio? I hope they recover.
this got filed away into my poo bucket weeks ago...no way i'm going to fish it out of there next February.
If you’re going to push it nearly a year there should be some really significant changes. If not… push it two years. I don’t think anyone will mind not shooting purple blobs for gear score even if it takes a little longer.
Pretty massive delay
To make it the best game possible? Yeah, going to need another 8 years.
I recognize this sounds a bit hyperbolic, but this to me is yet another painful step in Rocksteady's death march. I would love to know what the hell happened to this once great team in the time between Arkham Knight and Suicide Squad.
Short of it being completely redesigned (which obviously it won't be), I expect this to still be a failure next year instead.
Sadly they've taken themselves down the wrong path with this one
@get2sammyb They're in a lose, lose situation as well though. If they had released as planned then everyone would have lost their minds. Now, with just under a year delay to make improvements, people will say it still won't make a difference.
The delay probably won't change anything. They are just trying to let the negativity die off before release. Nobody wants that live service loot based gear level crap out of a game like this. A few developers will probably have to hit the graveyard before the masses learn there lesson.
The biggest turnaround I think I've ever seen from demo to release was Halo on the original Xbox. Looked absolutely shocking and was rightly slammed for its terrible frame rate and glitches. But then when release came round it was amazing. It pretty much saved Xbox as a brand and played a huge part in making the console FPS and online multiplayer popular.
Thats a pretty colossal delay but still have very little faith in this one. If it ever comes to plus or gamepass I'll give it a shot
All they had to do was make Arkham but Suicide Squad, damn...
this is even worse , just release it and make something else !!!! we want arkham like games man
Thats a way longer delay than we were expecting, no? Maybe they are considering to do a big overhawl.
What a mess lol
Rocksteady used the default delay statement. It should say : We have delayed our game because the backlash to our state of play showing has WB execs pointing guns at our pets heads til we fix it. Look forward to the minor improvements we can make because the core gameplay is pretty much set in stone but we might let Captain Boomerang use a Boomerang.
The delay is smart because with Ragnarok still hanging around, RE4, Jedi Fallen Survivor, Tears of the Kingdom & Final Fantasy 16 all hitting in this half year, these crappy service skinner games deservedly get torn to shreds even harder.
Will it change anything? Doubtful, they're just praying the release schedule is a little lighter early next year! Good luck!
I'd be shocked if this sold well. A complete Omnishambles.
Still think only a total overhaul can save this monstrosity.
@LN78 Its one bad choice yes, but it's a choice they took 8 years to make. Had it been a quick ( certainly cheaper) turn around this might not sink the company. But when you spend the better part of a decade on one game and it flops well...
Media Molecule at least are a small team so probably didnt spend as much over the years of Dreams development. But look at The Last Guardian. I wouldnt be surprised if it alone sealed the fate of Japan Studio.
Poor Rocksteady look how far you've fallen. From a proud (Arkham) Knight to suicide (Squad). No wonder the two main guys left.
Out in Feb 2024. Forgotten by March.
What a waste of a great studio. How do you go from making the Arkham games to this…?
@swagbag7 a company almost universally praised by everyone doesn't make them overrated just bc you think so.
This game is going to lose so much f-ing money.
Typical. Rocksteady have delayed every one of their last 3 games.
This one was originally due in 2022 ffs
Rocksteady are going to be shut down within the next few years. They haven't put out a game in nearly 10 years and this is dead on arrival
I'm still completely baffled by Rocksteady.
They made probably the greatest single player batman games or superhero games at the time ever.
Their response to that amazing trilogy..... a co op shooter with a suicide skin on top shooting purple blobs for hit points.
I mean come on I saw the gameplay trailer it looked like a ps3 shooting gallery game with all the hit markers with the purple blobs.
I just can't get my head around it, when they made such deep gritty grounded story driven story games.
Please can someone explain to me because it just doesn't make sense at all.
Naughty dog may go from third person platformer then a third person open world type collectathon, to a third person action adventure to a gritty third person adult adventure but they never go 3 great single player games then 10 year writers block and come back with a ps3 style fortnite clone.
I'm losing my mind. Please help.
Where my superman gritty game.
Where's another batman game.
Where's my any sc hero game.
@Tharsman I sure hope it is a major overhaul but to be honest for what it needs the delay should be a lot longer.
@nomither6
Agreed. That's the worst thing about live service games. They take up so many resources that a studio essentially isn't able to do anything else for a very long time. I loved the Tomb Raider games Crystal Dynamics did but because of Avengers that series has been on ice for what feels like forever.
Then you got Rocksteady who hasn't released a game in almost a decade and even when this thing launches it's going to take even longer since they will inevitably try to support it even though no one wants it!☹️
Just a sad state of affairs here.
@AdamantiumPriest you wonder though the 2 main guys who spear headed the arkham series leave before this game is released.
Somet isn't right. Do we think WB pushed live service on them.
Definitely think this delay won't help. I actually think they should release asap. This may overall Doom the developer and clearly this game will flop but I think in a larger scope we need more of these really shallow live service games to fail. The industry needs a swift kick in the face to be honest; otherwise we're just going to get more and more of these in place of games many people want(looking at you Sony) .
Because the industry has become so blindly profit-centric and predatory we need some financial failures to happen in order for the industry to correct itself. In essence realigning with demand. right now this industry is not doing that; what they are doing is looking at very very select few titles that are generating recurring profit streams long term for shareholders and getting greed based fomo. Thus we have an industry-wide very late to the party Gold Rush where everyone is trying to replicate that and most of them are failing.
Perhaps a few More high profile failures will make these profiteering tone deaf entities realize how futile and seperate the few die hard live service addiction focused titles and those that play them are from the larger gaming community/enthusiasts.
The live service addicted folk may be many, but they aren't merely going to put down that habit to start all over again with another. The actual gaming community is, has, and will continue to reject mass adoption of these throughout the gaming medium.
So hopefully a few more multimillion dollar flops will make that distinction clear.
These guys had a fantastic formula that all they needed was to tweak slightly for future games, instead they threw it all in the garbage for a game that less then 5 people are excited for.
I would have preferred they just released it as is and moved on to something else, I predict the delay won't make a difference in the public perception of the game and it will flop harder then Gotham Knights.
@Tharsman yeah that much of a delay must mean something. not sure why so many folks are so certain they just pushed the game almost 11 months but everything's going to stay as planned.
To make best possible experience - does it mean throw ut away and start from scratch? ...because nothing else helps...
@zupertramp Its mostly due to the original rumor, that it was going to just be pushed back by a few months (and further into the year, important bit) and that same source said no mayor changes were planned.
The fact the delay is now for next year obviously mean things have changed internally from whatever that source said.
@Tharsman given the original rumor, I'd be on board the hate train with everyone else if it were delayed a few months but like, stands to reason that if the rumor was only half true about how much of a delay we'd see maybe it's also not completely true about how much is changing.
Just seems bizarre to already write the game off when we really have no idea what'll happen by Feb '24. And that's assuming this is the last delay.
If this were a delay for polish and bug fixes, it wouldn’t be this long. But if they were making major changes to the game, the delay would have to be even longer.
I think this delay could be for two reasons:
Even if those are the real reasons for the delay, they’re still gonna have a tough time reintroducing the game in February. Even that much of a delay won’t make people forget their first impressions of it.
@RawnDawn It was originally due last August. Let's not forget that.
This is looking like a Halo Infinite situation to me. It'll launch in a terrible state and we'll all wonder how the heck it was ever going to originally launch as intended.
Even if they fully remove the live service aspect, it'll still remain a hop around and shoot colorful weak spot shooter, and you can team up with friends online (surely no Splitscreen) to complete this repetitive task... together. All of it surely strung together by a few nice looking cut scenes, while 95% of the story will probably be nonstop radio banter in the background until your ears bleed and you question your life choices.
I never had a problem. Thought the game looked good.
Not sure why anyone who didn't like it are complaining about a delay.
You didn't like it anyway.
it had to be done.
I don't understand what they think they can achieve with this delay?
That PlayStation direct was so terrible it delayed a game a year, impressive.
This just isn’t enough.
I think what they will try to go for is a Gotham Knights rebalance of the mechanics. GK was clearly a live service game early in development. Once it became clear that the Live Service market is over saturated they decided to strip it all out.
Problem is that they couldn’t fundamentally redesign the game, so the balance felt really off putting on that game.
Suicide Squad is even more dependent on its live service game play loop. So it’ll suffer even more with the attempted rebalance.
Such a shame. The Arkham Trilogy was fantastic. Arkham Knight is my fifth favorite game of the PS4 era. It’s a shame Rocksteady went down this road.
@KundaliniRising333
The market for live service is so oversaturated that I have no idea why companies are still trying to break in.
The genre is dominated by Fortnite, Final Fantasy XIV, Apex, Call of Duty, Destiny, and Genshin. Because of the required time sink demanded of gamers for these types of games it’s not even a money problem; it’s a time problem. Gamers interested in live service games don’t have enough time to play them all.
Why can’t studios and publishers recognize this easily seen truth? The market has expanded as far as it reasonably can. Those six games dominate the live service market; there’s nothing left for any newcomers.
Had Rocksteady used these 8 years to build a Superman single player story driven experience, or even an Arkham sequel series, it’s likely they could have gotten two highly reviewed games out by now that would have sold like hotcakes and made a ton of money.
@DualWielding
They won’t achieve much. The die was cast back in the first year of development almost 8 years ago.
Had this game launched on PC, PS4, and Xbox One back in 2018 it may would have had a chance to stand out. Live service (as we currently know it) was still new and fresh at the time. The market had space available for the taking. They could have released a 9th Gen version to coincide with the launches of the PS5 and Xbox Series.
But because they took their sweet ass time building this game, it’s launching way too late to take advantage of that grace period the live service market had back then.
The market is locked up now. There’s no more room for newcomers.
@ItsBritneyB_tch Simple. Release Arkham Knight then spend 2-3 year working on multiple failed game concepts. Realize that is going to nowhere so you then recycle the idea of a Suicide Squad from WB Montreal. Why did I say that? It cause WB Montreal was originally working on a Suicide Squad. It was tease at the end Origins, and Origins Blackgate. With the rumor that they were still working on it a year after Arkham Knight released, but then it was "canceled" with the team moving on to Gotham Knights and another DC game. But suddenly 4 years later Rocksteady announces this. I do not believe Rocksteady spent 8 years developing this game.
It dosn't look good for this one. I've never liked the suicide squad in the comics or the movies but i was hoping this would have been a great game for all the fans out there that were waiting on this. People here keep saying what a great formula rocksteady had and should have stuck to it but whilst i'll agree it was great in the 3 arkham games if they kept churning out the same type of games over and over it wouldnt be long before you all start calling them one trick ponys and they need to try something new blah,blah,blah. It happens every year with call of duty where the games are slated because its just more of the same (ironically the devs are sticking to their winning formula) and they get slated for trying something new and the die hards dont like it..At least they have tried and failed to attempt something new so i'll give them kudos for at least trying and hope for their sakes as a studio it turns out ok.
They will try to steer the course, but 8 months is not enough to save it at this point. It will hit the iceberg one way or another. I guess they want to try and soften the blow, but it's not like they can change ship at this point. It will sink regardless. It was a bad concept to begin with. If you are gonna make a live service, imagine not using the justice league but a group of B tier villains/anti-heroes as your characters. It was disaster in the making since that decision was made.
This would only have worked as a single player game and even then, it would likely flop.
I'm gonna be honest, i don't know what they hope to achieve with this delay. They are just increasing their losses. Cancel the thing and use the assets for a new project.
Yikes! Doesn't look good for this game.
I wonder what took so long to make the announcement considering it kinda leaked a while ago. In all honesty despite reports and peoples general vibes about the whole thing if it was getting delayed for any reason but retooling the game I imagine it would go to a quiet month like august or something where there’s no games like FFXVI or TOTK. The fact it’s being delayed until February of next year which is notoriously full of game releases leads me to think some sort of deal got arranged. Rocksteady went to whoever their boss is on this. WB CEO who knows and the CEO is like “no more delays this is your last delay. Get rid of all the stuff people screamed at you on like always online and get ready for a re showing in fall or something.” Again all just speculation but I just feel such a hefty delay means something because if they just wanted to put it out they would do it in like a dead month like august or something.
so WB needed to see a severe backlash before they knew that nobody wanted a live service game littered with MTX? they couldn't have figured that out in pre-production? now they are trying to revert all the nasty stuff they crammed into this mess to try and make it a little bit better and more tolerable?... what a stupid way of developing a game. this project has been in development for close to 8 years already... 9 years by the time it releases. what a way to turn rocksteady into a joke. it is a real pity too because they were a proven studio that did not deserve this fate. the end is near for rocksteady... unless this game sells 20+m copies, WB will not hesistate to pull the plug now.
Best way to improve it, would be to scrap it all and start again...
To think gamers the world over had held out in high hopes that this would deliver where 'Gotham Knights' failed, only to receive this tripe and realise it was actually that much worse!
How hard can it be to make a DC multiplayer/ squad based action-adventure rpg. Hell, there was already a fantastic ps2 era 'Justice League' game that did it pretty much perfectly. All they had to do was bring the environment, interaction and controls up to par with contemporary standards, swap the league for the Squad, and job done!
This game is doomed and no delay can save it now. It's still going to be Live Service like Avengers and the majority don't want that. I hope this doesn't sink Rockstar but I think Sammy is right I think they've really shot themselves in the foot with this one.
Sad to hear about the delay, but even worse that they won't be removing the actual elements making the game bad.
I won't be buying this at full price, will wait a few years until it's on sale for $20 New or cheaper.
@swagbag7 yes but your opinion is not a fact, so you should stop talking like it is XD
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