Suicide Squad’s Bad Sales Prove Shooting Yourself In The Foot Is Never A Good Plan

Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League has been out for almost a month, though it was known to be a dumpster fire for a long time. In its latest earnings call, WB talked about its performance metrics.

Chief Financial Officier Gunnar Wiedenfels stated, “Suicide Squad, 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.”

I must say, that is the most corporate-esque way of saying “We messed up trying to mine some of that live-service gold.” What did you expect to gain from creating a multiplayer looter-shooter at the expense of a universe that countless fans hold dear?

Suicide Squad Brought Nothing Of Value To The Table

Like you guys, I’m a player. As people who pay for products, it’s our right to demand quality; something that Suicide Squad didn’t have at all. Do you know why developers got lax and companies started taking advantage? Why the gaming industry is in the place it’s in today? There are lots of factors in play but in my opinion, it’s because of us consumers.

It’s our money that makes these businesses thrive, giving them profits and generating revenue. At some point, we proved that things like microtransactions & GAAS are okay with us which is why we’re here. It’s because we expected graphical and technological leaps every gen that developers ended up hyper-fixating on those things.

Rocksteady introduced us to a real superhero gaming experience back in the late 2000s with Batman Arkham Asylum. Even the underrated oddball of the family, Arkham Origins, was a phenomenal experience despite being developed by WB Montreal.

Going from the standard set by the Arkham quadrilogy to whatever Suicide Squad ended up being is as disgraceful as it can get. A quick explanation, I said quadrilogy due to the place of Origins in the Arkham universe. It may not have been Rocksteady’s creation but it’s canon to the lore and WB Montreal ended up working on Gotham Knights too. It did certain things nicely but that doesn’t make it any better.

Coming back on topic, bad games can be fun too and that’s alright. It doesn’t change the fact that it’s objectively bad overall. In a market saturated with these looter-shooters, Suicide Squad didn’t do much to stand out. Killing off the Justice League certainly didn’t do it any favors either.

That’s the next thing.

Killing Your Legacy Is Supposed To Be Profitable?

A while back I saw a tweet from Grummz on X and it made more sense than it should have. If you’ve been following the gaming industry, seeing everything go up in smoke as corpos chase the bag, it should be hard for you to accept the current situation.

It's true what they say. Gaming was hijacked by non-gamers once the money got good.

AAA is filled with CEOs who have no idea what gamers really want but who are really good at monetization …in the short term.

— Grummz (@Grummz) January 29, 2024

You think about it and tell me. People in suits are the kinds of guys companies are run by, the ones who stand as investors. Such folks at WB decided it was a good idea to go all in on live service. Hey, I’m all for making a good, profitable game but it begs the question—what are your true interests?

Suits over at WB thought it was a good plan to destroy the Arkham universe by cutting out 5 years’ worth of story, only conveying it in some recordings, and then getting a band of dumbed-down C-listers to delete the Justice League.

In what universe was that pitch going to be profitable?

I’m sorry; even if Batman had gotten a respectable death, there’s too much stuff that’s wrong with Suicide Squad for it to be as successful as say Helldivers 2. That game was in the oven for almost a decade; its success has been astounding but that’s an entirely different topic.

In my opinion, you can’t make money off a live service game that’s not built to last. You can’t make such a game if you don’t have the right interests at heart. That brings me to my last point…

Bad Sales? Consider Making Something Good

I’ll keep it real, the reason why Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League even exists seems like a “just get it done” situation to me. Maybe it was meant to capitalize on the movie somehow or perhaps promote the characters in this universe. Yeah, the idea of killing the Justice League is interesting but not if you botch things up this bad.

It’s the easiest thing to make money by selling a video game. All you have to do is target the consumer’s pain points and the money begins to flow. Had the devs not treated the five-year gap post-Arkham Knight as an afterthought, Suicide Squad would have had better legs to stand on.

And if you do want to go deep into the whole live-service schtick, do it right. A game where you play as the Justice League set in the Arkham universe would sell even if it was bad. Names and labels carry a lot of power. Justice League positively attracts more people than Suicide Squad any day of the week.

Then there’s the whole set of issues with gameplay and mission design. You’ve got solid competition in the market and the best you could do was some washed-out third-person shooter that gets dunked on by Fortnite alone. I’ll take it up a notch, Gotham Knights had better gameplay than Suicide Squad. I’m sorry if you disagree but this isn’t a compliment for the former either.

It’s just hilarious that you’d make such a product, knowing it’ll flop, and then go on record and say “Yeah man, the sales were disappointing and now we’ve got some tough competition.”

What were you thinking?

Will They Learn From Suicide Squad?

It’s not every day that a big company learns from its mistakes and gives the people what they want. But at least players sent a crystal clear message with their wallets. With WB acknowledging the results, who knows what the future holds?

If Bandai Namco can cancel five games for quality control, maybe WB will end up learning a thing or two as well. Fingers crossed.