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Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League team Rocksteady Studios has suffered an unconfirmed number of redundancies across its QA department following the live-service game's poor sales and critical reception earlier this year. Sources in contact with Eurogamer state the QA team has been cut by more than 50 per cent, shrinking from 33 employees to 15.
The cuts will leave those still at the developer with more work to handle, and it is claimed higher-ups acknowledged the "restructuring" will have an impact on "product quality". The report claims the poor sales of Suicide Squad are "directly cited" as a reason for the layoffs.
Since its failed launch in February, Suicide Squad has been written up as a $200 million loss for Rocksteady Studios and publisher Warner Bros. A Bloomberg report claimed the project was essentially doomed from the start, with conflicting ideas between the developer and publisher as well as a significant change in combat approach, from the melee bouts of the Batman: Arkham series to the guns in Kill the Justice League. While post-launch support for the game continues, it's up in the air how much longer that will go on for, as it's suggested some of the studio's workforce has now been shifted to assist a Director's Cut version of Hogwarts Legacy.
In our Suicide Squad PS5 review, we awarded a 7/10 rating and said: "It's tough not to think about what could have been if Rocksteady opted for another traditional single player title — especially since the split personalities at this game's heart stop it from reaching the heights of the developer's previous works. That said, despite all of our complaints, we can't deny that the game's fun."
How much longer do you think Rocksteady will have to work on Suicide Squad for? Put your prediction in the comments below.
[source eurogamer.net]
Comments 47
Yeah, it was clearly the QA department that needs laying off when they’re the only thing standing in the way of a doomed project becoming a doomed bug-ridden mess of a project. Tw*ts.
The whole Arkham trilogy, especially Arkham Knight is a damn masterpiece. Knight is a technical marvel and looks more detailed than any PS5 game, hands down. Even the criticised Batmobile was done so well, only Rockstar does car mechanics better.
They went ALL OUT.
Shame to see them fall like this, but I can't say underserved. Really sad :/
@nessisonett I was about to say the same thing! You’d want to invest in QA and reduce management headcount, to prevent the next game from ending up in the same dire mess
@WhiteRabbit As I said on another website it's almost certain the people who made those decisions are LONG gone. Since Suicide Squad was conceived, and the decisions were made, Rocksteady's parent company Warner Bros (Time Warner at the time) have been acquired by AT&T in 2018, rebranded to WarnerMedia, then divested and merged with Discovery in 2022 to become Warner Bros. Discovery. Each merger or restructuring would have shunted out a lot of execs, especially in gaming and other media as their focus has been almost entirely on Movies and TV.
Of course the execs would have had a golden handshake but it's highly likely most of the people who forced Suicide Squad down that path are long gone too.
Pour one out for the devs over at firewalk then.....
@WhiteRabbit
In time, it will. If they're too stupid to not see what does and doesn't work with all these colossal failures going on in the industry, then they'll feel it eventually.
@McTwist Knight is amazing in everything but the main story that felt like a dissapointment compared to the previous ones.Didnt help that Paul Dini didn't wrote it,it really shows.
The people at the top should be the ones getting laid off!
@Thatguyoverthere
I disagree, I think the storytelling was incredible. Not as consistent as City, but it was bigger and an ending to a trilogy, so arguably harder and they still pulled it off.
I include the moments, random encounters with the Joker for instance in there. So many cool moments when you're just going through the City and something like that pops up. Really well made and filled to the brim
I'll eat my shoes, shorts and socks if a game goes the extra mile like that this generation, bar Rockstar of course. I'm that confident in how trash the industry has become
It’s so amazing how literally despite so many cases telling executives why they shouldn’t do this, their first instinct is to always lay off QA. Congrats on either making your next project more buggy at launch or making it take longer to develop and squash out the bugs.
Good. That's what you get for making a ***** live service game that literally nobody asked for. I do feel bad for the team though.
@Maubari The QA team wasn’t the one who chose to make it a live service. QA wasn’t the one responsible for most core gameplay mechanics and design. Layoffs should only be celebrated if they’re done at the very top.
The only sensible decision WB has made is to immediately move those staff over to the hugely successful Hogwarts Legacy to make a directors cut/sequel support. That game saved WB and allowed WB executives to get away with a $200 million write off as the HP universe stuff has made and will continue to make Billions. Quidditch Champions will be another hit for them. It's a shame they don't respect the DC universe in the same way. A single player Batman game would have made a fortune. How about Batman Legacy? Maybe I should be the executive there haha.
QA are likely to be the first ones to go as they are primarily needed pre launch and work on a temporary contract basis (looking at you Naughty Dog). In a ideal world they wouldn't make such a risky live service can and just cash out
@Deoxyr1bose Fair enough. It's still good news that it flopped big time though.
I wonder if the devs felt like they were some sort of suicide squad themselves, being forced to work on something they surely knew was gonna flop.
This is sad...
Batman is one of my most fav 'super' heroes character and Rocksteady made arguably the best Batman games i ever played. But ***** WB executives forced them into making live service game that doesn't used their best quality.
But again. I heard the top talents who made all Arkham games already left Rocksteady years ago. Maybe they already seen this dissaster when WB forced them to turn Suicide Squad into live service crap...
@McTwist The joker random encounters were nice problem is he oversaturated the entire game with his presence,the Arkham knight identity was so blatantly obvious,the game secret ending made no sense,etc.
Arkham knight isn't a bad game it's just underwhelming.
@Thatguyoverthere
Underwhelming story wise, maybe. Everything else, stellar
“Shocked pikachu face”
And now the narrative will be "people just don't want justice league games" or some garbage like that.
Imagined if they make new single player batman trilogy open world games instead, it will sell millions, just like WB harry potter open world games.
Also what the QA teams had anything to do with the game sales?! They didn't made the game to be live service instead of single player games.
Why if some games flop western company like to fired people that didn't have anything to do with the games failing?
@McTwist I'm with you, Arkham Knight is incredible, that Bat Mobile was just so well designed.
for all these marxists alleged devs. the upcoming video game crash is all down to you. guess what normal indy studios will survive.
Eurgh. Buy studio. Make studio do something you deem to have the best cost/reward, against all other advice. Get hit with cost. Decide that makes it riskier for future. Save costs by laying off resources that were misused by the entity forcing the decision.
Gotta love capitalism sometimes...
@McTwist
I love Arkham Knight to death. It was a true labour of love from Rocksteady. You can tell it was made by people who had both the talent and passion for the material and that reflected on the end product.
Not having a high quality boss fight was unforgivable, though. They must've ran out of time because it is inexplicable. That is the one and only fault the game has in my eyes.
Anyway, it's so sad to see what has become of the studio.
RockSteady with the most predictable layoffs ever and like most AAA devs along with them and the publisher WarnerBros, the wrong lessons will be learned.
@nessisonett I mean the QA department did drop the ball pretty hard with this game. When the game launched it auto completed the story for people, spoiling the ending as soon as they started to play. Then there are the several bugs that make the game unplayable. The fact that all of these major things got past the QA department means they definitely were not good at their job
@Boxmonkey the people at the top who made the bad creative decisions all moved on from Rocksteady about 2 years ago. Sefton Hill and a bunch of the top developers and executives at Rocksteady left to create their own studio once they realized they made a ***** game. They realized that gamers are stupid as most believe because they weren’t there when the game launched then they had nothing to do with Suicide Squad, despite working on the game for 5.5 years.
@Zenos What are you talking about? What is woke about this game its just a terrible game nothing more?
@McTwist While I personally feel that Arkham Knight was a banger, an easy 9 or 10/10, it does not look "more detailed than any PS5 game". You have serious nostalgia goggles on if you think that's accurate. It was UE3 based, it's literally impossible for that claim to be true, even if you actually believe it.
@Flaming_Kaiser Agreed. I think sometimes people just say or do things just because they hear/see others do it.
@Flaming_Kaiser I think what he means is season 2 expansion Mrs Freeze or Mr Freeze from otherworld where he's a woman and also lesbian.
But yeah, this game failed because it's just not good.
@PuppetMaster Oh, that makes more sense. Yeah, the game sucked way before any dlc dropped lol
I wonder when this is going on ps plus? I’d probably give it a whirl on there
It’s crazy to me how some celebrate a game failing because they don’t like the premise. Just really odd behavior. That I see mostly on this site for some reason…
@yohn777 I've seen the spoiler and what they did to Batman Arkham voiced by the late Kevin Conroy is just dirty and disrespectful. Fortunately that wasn't his final role as Batman. R.I.P Kevin Conroy...you will be missed 😔
@TrickyDicky99 For Rocksteady case, people sorry for them because they knew the devs can make great games. But because WB interfering and forced them into live service, it affected the quality of their game.
@PuppetMaster WB did force Rocksteady to make the game live service. Jason Schreier released an in depth article explaining how WB just told them to make a Suicide Squad game. Rocksteady’s ceo Sefton Hill decided to make the game a live service game after seeing Fortnite’s and Destiny’s success as development started in 2017. This was all on Rocksteady and not the “big bad publisher” like gamers always parrot when they don’t think for two seconds.
@yohn777
Look up some Knight/ SS or Gotham Knights comparisons. It's beyond laughable.
With looks I mean animations, details, graphics, destructibles, sound design, lighting and just the sheer amount of work put into it all to make it look stunning.
Show me a game where I can zoom in and see the stitching on the suits. Spider-Man and Horizon are pretty, but nowhere near Arkham Knight. They've got lots of shortcomings. Many things can look off, the faces can look wax-y, etc.
When it's raining in Knight and you span your cape to fly, the freaking droplets will splash off your cape. Besides, the animations on the cape itself... Insanity!
I hear this a lot, but opposite is true. You people have forgotten how good Knight actually was. Otherwise Gotham Knights and SS would've had an even bigger backlash
@McTwist Did you actually read my comment? I said Arkham Knight was a banger, I loved it lol.
Lmao also I loved how you said "Show me another game where you can see stitching in the suits" then mentioned Spider Man.
Boom. Spider Man does. Thanks for bringing it up.
I'm not trying to come at you man, I literally agree with you that it's a great game, but it doesn't look as good as any PS5 game. Particularly Spider Man 2 & Horizon Forbidden West, again, hilarious you think Arkham looks better than those.
Even games like Alan Wake II or the Avatar game are actual years beyond Arkham Knight in terms of visual fidelity.
What a shock. I didn't predict this at all.
They are lucky if they aren't outright shut down.
@TrickyDicky99 Hm I think you might wanna look up who the director, lead designer, lead programmer, and lead art design for those games are... I also seen in the wiki that the writer for Arkham Asylum was a producer for SSKTJL.
I know there's probably lots of the newer staff that weren't part of Asylum, but it's safe to say that it's not shocking why people were expecting more.
Yeah with Batman VR for Meta, if that does better than Assassin's Creed Nexus I do wonder, PSVR1 it was fair but here no clue.
Some smart staff or whichever staff that do or don't care that can't get through to the publisher/execs, QA easy to drop.
It's just sad. Who was going to tell them, who was going to listen to what audiences want then pushing an IP no one wanted pushed as far as it has been.
Audiences aren't always what I agree with as some are a bit particular and I have my own preferences then whatever key aspects in a game, but if it comes to an IP no one really likes, pushing it more and more to go 'oh this will land, eat it up already you sheep' that the parent companies want to be bigger, that the Suicide Squad content, the price of entry and more is not compelling why even bother trying to push it.
When willo they learn?
I'm not into the whole whatever culture of the game thing, I go for game design not the worlds/dialogue/themes, they can be terrible or particular and I will still be turned away but I usually will still ignore it if gameplay is appealing, with tv shows it's bad and I'm not interested at all, but when it comes to down to it, if an IP doesn't land any which way why keep pushing?
@TrickyDicky99 Sefton Hill is the director for Arkham Asylum, Arkham City, Arkham Knight, and Suicide Squad: KtJL. He also one of the writers for those games except Asylum which was wrote solely by Paul Dini.
I heard some old staff already left a couple years ago. But the director, writer, designer, and programmer are still the same. So yeah, i did used common sense and a bit of research.
@PloverNutter Don't take Jason words like a gospel, especially when we knew WB higher ups loves to interfere and make things worst.
I honestly thought this game came out last year. This year has truly not made much of a dent on me. 😂
@PuppetMaster Are we this sad that we can't handle anything anymore? The game was dead within a week and Joker was just as terrible. Maybe he is woke too who knows. Then again the word woke is so overused for anything that its a joke already.
@CrashBandicoat This is a much more reasonable viewpoint than being blatantly incorrect & letting subjectivity influence the facts. Like I've already repeated, I was a big fan of Arkham games. But if anyone does want to feel that way, I guess I can't take that away from them? Lol. Apparently at least 7 other people agreed that AK looks better than just any game made in the last 4 years. I will have to agree that it's much better looking than Gotham Knights but I think it's a bad comparison because GK is not a very technically advanced game for when it released, unlike AK (not that they can't be compared I just think there's many more graphically bespoke games it can be compared to).
I think Returnal was a PS5 game that comes to my mind for having a similar enveloping atmosphere. Anyway that's enough from me about it
Oh, sure, scapegoat the QA for the game nobody asks for. The decision makers never get fired.
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