Even with all of the complaints lobbied at Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, Warner Bros. is determined to make more live-service titles based on big IPs. Since the company owns an endless amount of these intellectual properties, making a buck out of them seems to be the main priority.
During the company’s Q3 earnings call (via The Gamer), CEO David Zazlav revealed plans to make more of these live-service titles based on one of their major IPs. Obviously, the aforementioned Suicide Squad is only one of these games, as Warner Bros. wants to release at least “three or four” of these “examples.”
"Our focus is on transforming our biggest franchises from largely console and PC based with three-four year release schedules to include more always on gameplay through live services, multiplatform and free-to-play extensions with the goal to have more players spending more time on more platforms,” says Zazlav. “Ultimately we want to drive engagement and monetization of longer cycles and at higher levels.”
It seems that Zazlav and the rest of Warner Bros. don’t remember how angry people were over the gameplay of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. Most fans saw this as another greedy looter shooter who wants to take your money, and Zazlav’s statement essentially confirms that.
Admittedly, the gameplay of Suicide Squad didn’t look horrible or anything like that, but nothing stood out from the most recent trailer. Not long after the public backlash, Rocksteady actually announced that they would be delaying this DC title again. Fans are hoping that this leads to most of the live-service mechanics getting removed, but that seems unlikely, given how game development works.
What makes this statement odd is that Warner Bros. released Hogwarts Legacy to critical acclaim and it wasn’t a live-service game at all. Like many well-reviewed games this year, Hogwarts Lehacy was a pure single-player experience and got plenty of love because of that.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be enough, as Warner Bros. makes games like Mortal Kombat 1, which is packed to the brim with microtransactions. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League will be more of the same when it comes to PS5, Xbox Series, and PC on February 2, 2024.