Warner Bros Games suffers after Suicide Squad fiasco

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League was released as Warner Bros Games's big bet for live service games in 2024. Developed by Rocksteady Studios, the title had a high budget and a long marketing campaign, but the commercial return fell well below expectations. The negative impact directly affected the company's financial results and continues to resonate months after the release.

Problems started right at launch, on February 2, 2024, with criticism of repetitive gameplay, bugs, unstable servers, and a mission structure considered generic. The community reacted poorly to the attempt to transform classic DC Comics characters into protagonists of a game with excessive focus on loot and seasonal progression.

According to the most recent fiscal report from Warner Bros Discovery, the games division experienced a significant drop in revenue, directly attributed to the performance of Suicide Squad. The company did not disclose official sales numbers, but industry analysts estimate that the game did not cover its production, marketing, and online service maintenance costs. In a call with investors, it was stated that the title had a performance "well below expectations", impacting profits in the first quarter of 2024.

The failure also raises doubts about the adopted business model. The insistence on the "games as a service" format has faced resistance from players, especially when there is not enough robust and engaging content to justify constant updates and microtransactions. The case of Suicide Squad adds to other problematic launches in the genre, like Marvel’s Avengers, which ended in 2023.

"The performance of the games unit was affected mainly by a major release that did not meet expected standards," says the statement from Warner Bros Discovery.

Even with updates and attempts to retain players with new content and characters, the active user base of the game quickly declined. Platforms like SteamDB show low numbers of simultaneous players in the first weeks post-launch.

The impact extends beyond immediate sales. The failure of such an ambitious title can affect the company's positioning in future projects. Internally, there is speculation that Warner Bros Games must review its strategy, prioritizing high-quality single-player experiences, like the successful Hogwarts Legacy, released in 2023, which generated over $1 billion in revenue.

With an increasingly demanding and vocal market, the episode serves as a warning to the sector: strong names and big budgets do not guarantee success. It is necessary to deliver experiences that meet expectations — or deal with the consequences.