A new report claims that Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League developer Rockstready was hit with another round of layoffs at the end of 2024.
Eurogamer’s Tom Phillips reports, “Half a dozen staff impacted by the redundancies have spoken to Eurogamer to confirm the job losses, under condition of anonymity to protect their careers.”
He went on to reveal the layoffs hit programming and artist teams as well as more Quality Assurance members.
This new round of layoffs followed a previous one in September. Phillips broke that news as well and reported that half of Rocksteady’s Quality Assurance department was laid off. It was reduced from 33 to 15.
He also claimed that the layoffs affected those outside of Quality Assurance as well and have affected individuals across the board from junior staff to individual who have been with the company for over five years.
The layoffs are not surprising given the game’s parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery made it clear the game was a financial disaster soon after it released in February 2024.
The company’s Chief Financial Officer Gunnar Wiedenfels revealed during the company’s first quarter earnings results webcast, “Starting with Studios, the $400 million+ year-over-year decline during Q1 was primarily due to the very tough comp we faced in games against the success of Hogwarts Legacy last year in the first quarter, in conjunction with the disappointing Suicide Squad release this past quarter, which we impaired, leading to a $200 million impact to EBITDA during the first quarter.”
Later in 2024, Weidenfels revealed that the company’s entire games division had over $300 million in write downs.
He said, “Results were impacted by games for which we took another $100 million plus impairment due to the underperforming releases, primarily MultiVersus this quarter, bringing total write down year-to-date to over $300 million in our games business, a key factor in this year’s studio profit decline.”
In December, Rocksteady announced the game would be shut down in January 2025.
It posted in a blog post, “With Deathstroke joining the roster, the Suicide Squad’s crusade against Brainiac is drawing to an end. Season 4 will finish up with Episode 8, which is scheduled to release in January 2025, and that will serve as the last seasonal Episode for Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League.”
“While Season 4 Episode 8 will mark the final battle against Brainiac, all online features will continue to be available, so you’ll still be able to enjoy co-op with friends, as well as all previous seasonal/episodic content. You’ll also have the option to play the game via the new Offline mode, which allows access to the main story campaign and all post-launch seasonal gameplay content without an internet connection,” the company added.
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When the game released at the beginning of February 2024 it hit a peak concurrent player count of 13,459.
The game quickly saw that player base evaporate. Within a month, the game was only posting a 24-hour peak of 436.
The game has seen a small revitalization in December after Warner Bros. Discovery discounted the game by 95%. In the past 24-hours, the game had a peak concurrent of 786 players.
What do you make of this latest round of layoffs affecting Rocksteady?
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Suicide Squad is free on PS+ this month and I'm still not going to play it.