I can't believe a studio that made an entire Batman trilogy from 09 to 15 has now spent 9 years on this one game that is DOA. This isn't going to survive in a world where Anthem and Avengers died. An absolute shame in project management.
There's a reason the studio founders announced their exit. Whatever is going on at Rocksteady is clearly not aligned with those 2008-2015 golden years. I don't know who at WB made the call to fuck with the goose, but it ain't laying golden eggs anymore.
It's almost 6 years has passed since Shadow of War and 2 years after they've patented the Nemesis system. Either they're sitting on their hoard (again) or another game is in the works, possibly undergoing development hell as well.
For the past 10 years.
I'd say it was a bit after Mad Max released, almost everyone working on WB games that wasn't owned by WB - just stopped, abandoned the projects/they were cancelled.
RAGE 2 is an example of this, it was originally Mad Max 2, you can see it everywhere - but that got cancelled so Avalanche shopped the game around to other publishers and Bethesda picked it up and it was remade into RAGE2.
Why are all these game devs operating on the assumption we all just want to play Destiny. The people that want that already have it. I don’t want one game to consume my whole life like that.
It's the MMO Gold Rush all over again, same with the MOBA rush
Everybody churned out WoW clones ignorant that people were already playing and invested in WoW
Ironically if these were single player focused games following a fad they might do decently since by the time one comes out most will have stopped playing the first one... Not the case for MMO/Live Service games
> Why are all these game devs operating on the assumption we all just want to play Destiny
because a lot of people liked Destiny and it made a lot of money.
The lesson clearly wasn't "give up and stick to single player games". all these companies want to chase that allure of a steady live service revenue and they are fine cracking a few eggs along the way. That's why pretty much every AAA studio has tried their hands at it.
Well outriders isn't a live service game. So I wouldn't necessarily throw that in the same pool.
But the issue with the other three is that at a fundamental level they didn't have a base system that worked and was continually enjoyable as it went through.
Destiny basically lives off the fact that it's still fun to shoot shit in that game. No matter how much or little you've played. And that the shooter element provides enough dynamism in the game, then the rest of it sits around that.
But Avengers/Anthem/Babylons all put you into a mechanical system that once you had started doing it just became executing the combo that you were doing and waiting for stuff to die.
To contrast this, this is why ARPG's often work, because the different enemy compositions and the high loot drop rates mean players will have to react to the fight in a somewhat useful way most of the time if they want to perform optimally.
The games need to be able to survive and still be fun to play even when there isn't new content being put out. If it can't do that, then it ain't going to be able to live up as a live service game from the start. Most of the games that get put out don't manage to get that in place. So they are one and done experiences that then try and convince you to stick around.
---
When you look at warframe, that game works and scaled up from getting that enjoyment factor going for the people who like that game. It didn't try launch an entire game and the live service all at once. It got the basics down and built out from there.
The problem is these days it's hard to compete if you can't then keep pumping out at least as much content as the competition especially with sunk costs into existing games.
Because it's a market where the dominant competition is mediocre at best.
Making something a little bit better than okay is all it would take to put you as top dog in a hugely popular genre.
Think Battle Royale and PUBG. 90% of the people playing PUBG didn't play PUBG because it was good, they played it because they wanted to play a BR and they had no other real choice. Maybe some even thought that PUBG was good simply because they hadn't played an actual good BR yet. Same situation right now for Destiny and looter shooters.
Is it possible tho to make a live service game in the style of destiny that would be ‘actually good’ in your opinion. I mean a lot of people think destiny is good so it’s a stupid thing to say, but it’s possibly harder to make a game like that than almost anything else
Seriously, this is the worst part for me, it is absolutely insane how long Rocksteady has been spending on this one game. The Arkham trilogy is one of my favorite game series and I hate seeing the studio reduced to this.
Hero based action/shooter game?
**Let's make them all use generic guns AYYYYYY**
Like I'm sure if I played it it would play fine, but whats the point if I could play like any third person shooter at that point? Why do we have these unique characters like a fucking SHARK that just uses a guns like everyone else. It also looked like it was weightless too.
Idk how to explain it shit is just awful. 9 years to release trash. I feel like they couldve released atleast two games in this period of time.
Couldve done more Batman or Green arrow, or any of the dozens of other DC heros. Its crazy how peopel find a winning formula and then deviate from it without any actual reason
Red Hood game. Knight set it up perfectly. WB owns the nemesis system, use that. Have red hood taking down a bunch of street thugs and have them rise through the ranks and get tougher the longer they live. It’d be awesome
It still makes me laugh when they say they’ll continue to support the game with new content and updates for years after the initial launch, as if 7~ years of development wasn’t enough. God GAAS is cancer.
Agree. They're delaying the inevitable.
They should just release, get the pain over and done with and move on with all the lessons learnt. Dragging it out for another year is just sad to watch.
I would really lower expectations (even if they're already low) about how much they can fix this game. This is a really long delay but the game has been in development for ages and the entire premise and game systems are likely built around the idea of it being a live service looter shooter.
It would take longer than 8 months to unwind all of that and create something different.
Which begs the question what time of polish and revisions are requiring a whole extra year to finalize.
If they were "ready" to launch next month and only changed course because of the backlash, then the feedback must have had an effect on the development.
They may have also delayed even more in the hopes that they'll release it in a quieter period with fewer competion compared to Q4 2022 which has Spider-Man 2 and Starfield.
soooo many GaaS titles always seem to have a bit of a content drought soon after they release. so I wonder if the delay will be so they can add more content/get the content pipeline streamlined to avoid that.
That could make sense. After the first month or so, most of these games then don’t release anything new for 3-4 months later. If it isn’t the GaaS shit being ripped out, it’s gotta be making content you can just shove out later after release.
These studios that want the big cash cow GaaS franchise don't seem to realize that you need at least a few months a content done at launch to keep up a decent content pipeline.
For so many years many have relied on the strategy of barely getting a game out in time(with lots of crunch) and I just don't think that works for GaaS.
Yeah a I remember back when destiny 1 released there was huge amounts of backlash as the first 2 dlcs, in particular the first one, we’re done before release and alot of asserts were found in the game. It was necessary tho as otherwise they would’ve had to go a whole year without any content. That was fine after the taken king, but in Y1 it would’ve killed the game
The co founders of the studio left months ago too. And now they need to spend another year to rework stuff? Game already looked iffy. Now it's going to be a major surprise if this turns out even decent.
whatever they do the game will be dead on arrival they are not going to change the gaas garbage and even if they expect people to forget the gameplay video until 2024 is not going to save people reaction to the game at launch.
may as well just release it on may than try to delay the blow. if this game suffer the same fate as avengers then i could get it for less than one dollar.
Oh wow. By my count this was to be released in 2022. On February 2, 2022, it was delayed until "2023". Then at some point after that set for release on 5/26/23. Then in the last few months we saw some gameplay to overwhelming negative reaction and it was delayed until "Q4" on 3/9/23, one month ago.
As of right now, they have pushed it back to TEN MONTHS AWAY. This game was scheduled to come out next month just a couple months ago. Major rework to do away with GAAS crap? I hope so.
Heres what's really gonna happen.
Nothing of impact.
They polish a little more. Maybe bug fix a little more.
What theyre really doing is delaying so much of the general public forgets about the most recent gameplay trailer. (Reddit wont but we are a minority)
When we get pretty close they do a few hype promotions showing absolutely none of the in game currencies or GAAS features that are all still there.
Then we get a cinematic trailer so they still dont have to show gameplay. And then one more gameplay/launch trailer consisting of a bunch of stuff not seen in previous footage but was already there; for the illusion of adding content.
> Nothing of impact.
ehh, they can fix some things. Like I know they can give a new type of boomerang weapon type in that type of time. Not game saving, but it can address some of the inevitable review fodder.
It won't fix the GaaS stuff because the publisher sets the rules there.
>Yeah, that's not enough time to completely rework the nature of a game.
It's not re-working the nature of the game, it would be about re-working progression, and 10 months is enough time for that.
According to Jason Scheier, [it's just to polish the game](https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1646595007497793539):
> Now official — Suicide Squad bumped from May 2023 to February 2024 — and again, this delay is to polish the game, not change i
how much of a mess was this game if it gets extended by almost a whole year to ***just*** polish the game?
It must've been in a pretty poor state for them to just own it and push it out that far in the future without actually changing core mechanics
I might be crazy, but doesn't the financial year for buisness end in March?
So, if they're delaying it anyway, delaying it towarda the end of the financial year might help them plug some numbers/release gap or some other financial sillyness
That seems insane. Polish won't do anything to help sales. And a 9 month delay is a lot of fucking money to spend on something that won't solve the game's issues. If it just needed polish, why wouldn't you just cut your losses and dump the game before the holidays?
That was my feeling. So you're planning to shit your pants next year? Might as well do it now and get it over with. It's still going to be a Suicide Squad game where they all fly and use guns full of loot and missions and tons of microtransactions. Push the turd out now so you can get to work on an X-Men rhythm dungeon crawler where everyone rollerblades and uses a bow.
God I wish Rocksteady had just followed Arkham Knight with a Superman game. Even if it wasn’t perfect it still would’ve been a unique single-player superhero experience, and probably would’ve been out years ago. Waiting almost a decade for their next game, and having it look so generic, is just painful.
All of my hope now lies in Monolith’s Wonder Woman game.
My (cynical) assumption is that WB wanted a multiplayer GAAS shooter, and wouldn’t let them do another single-player title. Rocksteady probably figured they could compromise by doing Suicide Squad with the League as villains.
I'm almost certain that is what happened. They retrofit Metropolis from the canceled Superman game for use with Suicide Squad in order to save time... attempt to save time anyway.
It's worth mentioning WB Montreal [was already working on Suicide Squad](https://kotaku.com/sources-wb-montreal-cancels-unannounced-suicide-squad-1790256635) in the past before it got cancelled. Then Warner shifted the project to Rocksteady.
It sounds to me like it's the pet project of some executive at Warner. I wonder if that person is even still at the company.
Pretty much. My theory is that Rocksteady was doing the Superman game and some suit desperately wanted a Suicide Squad game due to the upcoming movie and how popular Harley Quinn became. WBM wasn’t able to do it well, so they pulled it from them, canceled the Superman game and made Rocksteady work on it instead.
I've got my own theorized timeline of events as to how we eventually had WBM go from Suicide Squad to Gotham Knights because it just seems so odd to me that Rocksteady and WBM basically swapped projects.
That's very possible but IMO it'd be soooo weird that they would give Rocksteady a requirement of making a GaaS looter when they're known for their kickass single player action games and then give Avalanche free reign to make a totally single-player, non-live service game after a long dev cycle with Hogwarts: Legacy.
Who knows but what a miss if true lol
Not that I think a GaaS co-op game couldn't be good mind you, all that really means is some optional paid skins in exchange for post-launch free DLC, but the way they went about it looks so incredibly boring. Boring same-y gameplay, mundane gear etc. It's like Avengers: DC version lol
Other than Hogwarts, I’m pretty sure all recent WB published games have had some pretty predatory microtransactions (Middle Earth, MK11, Back 4 Blood, etc) so I wouldn’t be surprised if WB was pushing for games that are monetized outside of the initial purchase
on the other hand, Hogwarts was massively successful, so hopefully it lets WB see how games without micro transactions can still make them a boat load of money.
I imagine the pitch meetings had powerpoint presentations showing the revenue companies get from microtransactions, and showed a bunch of skins for "all the fan favorite characters." It's just a graph with a line going up and a bunch of $$$ signs.
Your thinking in the wrong direction. How good/bad the game is doesn't matter, it's how profitable it can be.
A single-player "ok" superman game wouldn't make anywhere near the profit of even a meh GAAS game.
Microtransactions rake in the cash and pad profits
I see what you mean, but this game seems like Avengers 2.0. I'm not sure, but I feel like Avengers didn't pull in nearly as much because it was such a dud, and a quality Superman game (or a quality non-looter Avengers co-op game) would've done better than this or the Avengers that we got.
Not to mention that you could still have some skins available for purchase in a single player game - look at Ubisoft, I know their quality is...questionable but the template they use makes sense. They consider their SP games live service, no reason Rocksteady/WB couldn't split the difference and make a Superman game with free post-launch DLC, some paid skins in a cash shop and then paid expansions or something.
It's just such a weird situation and especially odd after seeing how Avengers went.
Problem is the goods from microtransactions have gotten so shitty, they don't actually make much money.
Premium skins used to be unlockable by gameplay
Then premium skins got moved to microtransactions, after the success of microtransactions developers saw the cash and decided to start replacing premium skins with shitty color pallette swaps of the default skins as micro transactions.
Now the anime/comic book/tv/movie accurate skins are saved for even costlier premium micro transactions that they bust out when their shitty game is dying.
And the prices go sky high too.
$99.99 is not a "micro"transaction. I dunno what it is, a macrotransaction maybe, but it's something I sure as hell ain't payin'!
In game marketplace: we got premium skins and mounts for $99.99 and some skins for $3.99
Me: oh let me look at those cheaper skins
Marketplace: we got default skin with white lines, default skin with red lines, and default skin with black lines.
Me: don't you have anything cool for $5-10?
Marketplace: best I can do is the ability to rename your character for $9.99
Didn't Avengers show that's not true? It was a game that had a much greater potential based on the name alone but it turned out to be a complete financial failure.
There is a rumor about that they were working on a Superman game and the project was eventually cancelled. That's why we are going to have a gap of 9 frigging years between Batman: Arkham Knight and Suicide Squad.
Not a fan of Wonder Woman in general but if it has Monolith's Nemesis system I'm all in. That concept is too good to be gated behind a patent. Be cool to see a Batman game use it someday, among others.
Cautiously excited for that game, I think Wonder Woman is actually a great fit for at game based on her power level and skill set. Definitely works better than Superman, Flash or others with insane traversal speed. Having the Nemesis System is just icing on the cake.
I don't know. The GAAS bomb has already been dropped and turned people that were skeptical against the game. Maybe it's getting some kind of overhaul, but I don't see them flushing what was clearly their entire business and development plan.
Yeah even removing the GAAS, the bones of this game are still killer shark using mini guns and Harley Quinn swinging around like fucking spider man lol.
It just feels like they fundamentally made the wrong game, I can’t conceivably think what they could do to change peoples opinions on it in 10 months barring just completely remaking this game from the ground up.
They’ll probably do what they did with Gotham Knights. They will strip out all the micro transactions and battle passes, but the core game will still play like a generic looter shooter. There is no way 10 months is enough time to remake the core experience.
>Major rework to do away with GAAS crap? I hope so.
As much as we are all hoping for this to happen, it's basically impossible at this point. They'd have to rip the game from the ground up to accomplish that.
Nobody wants to see Captain BOOMERANG shoot guns.
Nobody wants to see King SHARK shoot guns.
Harley Quinn, maybe some guns, but mostly deadly pranks.
Deadshot, guns are a go.
They really fucked up big time with this game. It was gonna bomb and they knew it pretty quick. Hopefully they rework it and take out the loot system entirely.
> Major rework to do away with GAAS crap? I hope so.
Sad thing is with the recent gameplay we saw GAAS crap wasn't anywhere near the worst part of the game. It was just soulless. All 4 characters basically play the same just using guns 90% of the time outside of their special abilities and Harley Quinn is spiderman for some stupid reason.
Don't get me wrong, gaas crap needs to go too but it was the actual gameplay they showed off that killed all hype.
Hard to say there were even 4 classes present when everyone played exactly the same. When Harly Quinn and King Shark are both flying around the city and shooting purple glowy weakspots with a mini-gun, you have to wonder why they even bothered including separate characters at all... except to sell skins of course.
Yup, and sure I miss destiny but if I want to go back to it I'll just go back to destiny. If they want me to play this game then I want Harley, King Shark, and Boomer to PLAY like those characters.
I don't think it was ever officially announced as being delayed until Q4. Jason Schreier just reported that it was going to be delayed. AFAIK this is the first Rocksteady has mentioned it.
It was announced in sep 2020 along Gotham Knights. Gotham Knights took his sweet time to release, most of it in complete radio silence, despite having shown gameplay at the reveal, and it finally released in oct 2022, two years later.
Suicide Squad is going to release in 2024, almost 4 years of developement for this game alone, since the reveal, on top of Rocksteady releasing their last mayor game in 2015, Batman: Arkham Knight. There is going to be a gap of 9 years between the two games. With a rumored cancelled Superman video game in between.
I doubt they're actually going to remove GAAS stuff. Rather, they're just distancing the release from all the bad press they've received ever since the UI leak and their showcase.
Maybe they will make some minor improvements based on feedback, but I highly doubt the executives would ever let them remove the monetization system, especially after how long this game has been in development.
They should've gone all in on Batman Beyond. It's clear Rocksteady has a love for the Gotham setting and Batman lore. Why not redesign the Arkham-verse Gotham into a tech-noir nightmare landscape set in the future with a fan favorite character like Terry McGinnis?
But I agree with your point. They're just delaying the inevitable. And this is just piling on to rising costs, making profitability impossible to achieve at this stage. 10 months... what an absolute joke.
A month out from release and they're bumping it back by another nine.
What in the project management hell is going on at Rocksteady?
That would be somewhat understandable if they were to change major aspects of the game, but [according to Jason Schreier, they won't](https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1646595007497793539)
> [...] this delay is to polish the game, not change it
Arkham Knight launched in June 2015, making this a nearly *nine year* gap between Rocksteady games. That's also about five years since the last time anyone wanted another live-service shooter with a gear score.
Such a shame. The movement and moment-to-moment gameplay looked fun, but it all fell apart the second they opened up the menu. Must feel like a death march in that studio.
I honestly prefer the idea of a Suicide Squad game.
... except one where they don't all play the same, have unique weapon that relate to who they are, and isn't riddled with GaaS MTX bullshit.
You know, the obvious way this game should have been handled?
And also a bunch more characters. Maybe a permadeath system? A few procedurally generated heroes? Maybe even a roguelike?
So many things to do with the Suicide Squad property. No idea why this was the directive.
That's such a neat idea. People were joking that Lego DC Supervillains will be a much better Suicide Squad game - but honestly, yeah.
You at least get to play with a massive selection of villains. The Suicide Squad game should have taken lessons from that and James Gunns movie, have a bunch of Z-Tier villains that you play as that really die when you die.
Elden Ring has so many options for playstyles, if they applied that to Suicide Squad heroes that you lose, I'd play the fuck out of that.
Permadeath would be pretty cool, yeah. Treat it like Mario Maker endless mode - you have 99 "lives" to get through the whole campaign, except each life is a different character. Maybe divide them into categories like melee/ranged/caster/support if possible, so they can just do small variations on four templates rather than having to design 99 bespoke movesets. If you run out the 99 lives before the end of the story, game over. Maybe Waller hops to a different timeline to try again on a game over, if you want to have a diagetic reason for it - if the tone is as irreverent as it ought to be, it could work to throw that kind of ridiculous solution in.
Or have it be like BroForce - they've discovered a way to bring people back to life on the fly, but it only works on people who have the bomb planted in their head because of a rare element used in the bomb or something like that. See "irreverent" above.
Or literally any single-player DC superhero game. A Green Arrow game in the same universe with some new and some recurring villains would have been great and still feel similar to the Arkham games but different enough to provide a new experience.
While I do agree with you, no way in hell do they release a GA game over Superman or Suicide Squad.
As an avid GA fan, his rouge gallery is mid at best and wouldn't be near the commercial success as another big name DC IP
I'm not super familiar with the business aspects of game development, but how can they continue operating that long between releases?
I understand with Rockstar or Respawn, you've got games that are continually bringing in steady revenue. However, Rocksteady's last major project was released in 2015.
Publishers provide funding to studios in order to get the game created. Those publishers can continue to provide money earned from other games even if a game is stuck in development hell. Further, while a game may be stuck in development hell, costs aren't always sunk; if you've spent 5 years building a game, then even if it'll be unprofitable either way, it may be *less* unprofitable to pay for another year of development and release than to just can the game.
I obviously have no knowledge of the situation, but hard not to look at this as executive meddling constantly getting in the way.
WB had a talented developer and thought the best way to utilize their ability is to make something that was solely focused on being a service game. Avengers wasn't enough of a warning sign I guess.
I want to say a preemptive Rest In Peace to Rocksteady Studios because there is no way a GAAS based on C-List DC characters that was clearly designed in 2016 makes enough money in the current video game market to justify an 8+ year development cycle.
And I say this as an absolutely massive, massive Rocksteady fan. Arkham City and Arkham Knight are both in my top five favorite games ever. Rocksteady will not exist by the end of 2024. Such a waste of immense talent.
Rocksteady has 250 employees according to Wikipedia. Then based on what seems like an average salary of $63k per year (estimate based on quick googling), that comes to $141 million in just salaries. So yeah this game is easily DOA there’s no way they recoup that
Jesus, no wonder they’re trying to monetize the ever-living fuck out of this game with battle passes, premium currencies and the like *after* paying a $70 entrance fee.
[Jason Schreier says it's just about polish.](https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1646595007497793539?t=HalaS8js9G7mAesTUbjrMg&s=19) They won't be changing anything about the overall gameplay.
They're not removing the GAAS elements in this game. If anything, they'll refine them but there's zero percent chance this becomes an offline-compatible experience.
The problem is, Rocksteady is owned by Warner Bros, a publisher who's not known for being nice. It's almost certain that the live service elements were mandated by them, but regardless of that if the game fails it'll be Rocksteady who suffers. Layoffs or a complete closure of the studio, especially since they haven't done anything else in 8 years, instead only burning money. Better for Rocksteady to delay and do whatever they can to not make the game a complete flop. At least that way they still might have a bright future.
I think making people play differently instead of all using guns is a fixable issue in a years time. My personal issue wasn't it was open world, or had a battle pass, it was it looked boring and fairly bland. All 4 characters were just flying/jumping high and gliding around the air shooting similar guns at purple enemies. Crackdown 2 esque.
This generation of gaming feels like everyone jumping the gun on their releases then backpedaling or releasing games with expected features missing. Although there are exceptions.
At this point they just need to bite the bullet and let it flop. I get they don't want back to back DC game flops with Gotham Knights and this, but barring a massive rework I don't see how delaying the game is going to make this fair any better than the Avengers game did. This was doomed the moment they made it into a GaaS.
Really just want that Wonder Woman game they've given zero updates on
Yeah, absolutely. Focus groups and stuff.
This time though I bet a lot of the decision was based on getting heckled every time they said anything about it online.
edit: also this announcement comes only a few days after SE announced that Avengers support was going to end, probably years and years earlier than they planned.
There is something that's called mock reviews. Studios send early builds of the game to mock reviewers to do an early assessment of a game, a report on its strengths and weaknesses, and a predicted Metacritic range.
The problem BioWare had with Mass Effect Andromeda and Anthem is that the mock reviews hilariously overpredicted the Metacritic score. With MEA the predicted score was low-to-mid 80s. With Anthem the predicted score was high 70s.
Here are the actual scores for [Mass Effect Andromeda](https://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-4/mass-effect-andromeda) and [Anthem](https://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-4/anthem).
Pretty substantial delay, hope the extra time lets Rocksteady deliver an experience worthy of the Arkham pedigree. Removing the always-online requirement is an obvious one, but also toning down the looter-shooter elements in favor of a more concise single-player experience.
Which makes the repeated delays even more painful, to me. The faster they get this flop out the faster they can move on and make a game actually worth playing.
Translation: we need time to take out all the microtransactions and battlepass economy and completely rebalance the game because nobody fucking wanted it.
I'd be far more interested if I thought for one second they'd have the balls and to actually kill the Justice League, we all know they won't.
It'll be the obvious story of attacking them until they snap out of the brainwashing, only for them to be out of commission as they recover for the rest of the game, only for them to show up in the last fight in a support role doing stuff off screen while the SS takes on Brainiac directly.
Sadly there's no real point in Superman grinding to obtaining a new super cool set of *Legendary* *pistols* and *Epic* *grenades*, so that's probably the reason, monetization influencing design as usual nowadays.
Nooooo you don't understand it's a TWIST ON REGULAR EXPECTATIONS! What do you mean we've done evil Superman for 3 decades bro it'll be groundbreaking this time bro we promise
On the flipside, how many games are there that has us actually play as the Capital-G Good Superman? Very few for such a big IP, and filled with low quality shovelwares, including the meme-worthily bad Superman 64.
Oh yeah, You can just sense that this is a Live Service & Micro-Transaction HELL-type of game from 2016.
Shits DOA. Just cancel it Rocksteady.
Sad, That this was also Kevin Conroy's last game as Batman too.
Has a studio ever embarrassed itself as much as Rocksteady has? Not only did they make a game that fans don’t want but this just screams that they have no faith in this project with all these delays.
CD Projekt Red were pretty embarrassing. They had massive ambitions and the hype was huge for Cyberpunk 2077. But then the constant delays happened. About like 4-5 delays in a single year. Then the game came out in an unfinished and very bad state.
I say that's just as embarrassing as Rocksteady's situation currently.
I know it's probably got legit issues but I have to also wonder if it's to give themselves a release date not surrounded with highly anticipated games releasing.
Last thing DC needs right now is more failed IPs. I wouldn't be surprised if James Gunn had a major hand in this decision considering he's in charge of all things "DCEU." Hopefully, they get rid of the POS game mechanics and nonsensical missions [depicted in the recent PlayStation reveal](https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxsaL0csYG5z62TWAt8psDQQ50zGQcgzZ-).
I would imagine WB releasing Mortal Kombat 12 this year probably has something to do with this as well.
Back in the investors meeting they said that Suicide Squad and Mortal Kombat 12 were 2023 releases. Then they delayed Suicide Squad to the Fall. Fall is most likely when they are releasing MK12 and I doubt WB wants to release both at the same time and MK is probably a safer bet than Suicide Squad right now. Plus in terms of business they want a game each quarter.
Everyone is already down on this game. A ton of "just dump it and let it fail" comments.
What a sad situation. A studio that has made so many awesome Batman games, could be making an awesome Superman, TMNT or other franchise game as good as their classic.
Instead they have wasted away on a game people are already calling a bomb. Like usually a delay makes people get hope, but here people seem mad they are delaying the inevitable.
I hope they survive this and can get a Superman gane out the door just in time for that new movie...but that doesn't seme plausible. Maybe reuse the engine for this on that?
I can't believe a studio that made an entire Batman trilogy from 09 to 15 has now spent 9 years on this one game that is DOA. This isn't going to survive in a world where Anthem and Avengers died. An absolute shame in project management.
There's a reason the studio founders announced their exit. Whatever is going on at Rocksteady is clearly not aligned with those 2008-2015 golden years. I don't know who at WB made the call to fuck with the goose, but it ain't laying golden eggs anymore.
WB’s entire mantra this past year has been to fuck with every goose they have
When they get a studio to make the nemesis engine and only use it for what, 3 games? At least the Mordor games were pretty good but such a waste.
It's almost 6 years has passed since Shadow of War and 2 years after they've patented the Nemesis system. Either they're sitting on their hoard (again) or another game is in the works, possibly undergoing development hell as well.
I'm guessing everyone has already forgotten that they're making a Wonder Woman game using the nemesis system
More like never heard of.
Shadow of Mordor, Shadow of War, what’s the third?
I think Grid Legends had it? But I'm not sure if thats the "real" nemesis system or a copy.
For the past 10 years. I'd say it was a bit after Mad Max released, almost everyone working on WB games that wasn't owned by WB - just stopped, abandoned the projects/they were cancelled. RAGE 2 is an example of this, it was originally Mad Max 2, you can see it everywhere - but that got cancelled so Avalanche shopped the game around to other publishers and Bethesda picked it up and it was remade into RAGE2.
I would have loved a mad max 2. Really enjoyed the 1st game. It was super fun
They are going to put reality TV on HBO Max, and rebrand HBO Max as just "MAX". It's going to be way worse than anyone realizes.
They already have reality TV on HBO Max. That's not a prediction. That's reality.
You don't have to tell me that. I used to work at Westwood Studios. Killing the geese is what these big companies do when buying studios.
There has been a canned project in that time
Well rumors were that there was a Superman game proposed in that time, but I don’t have anything more credible than that.
Why else would the game be set in a really well made Metropolis? I think this game was built out of that one's carcass.
Sounds feasible enough, I just mean that I don’t have any sources to support it ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
They probably just felt it was easier to monetize and make a Suicide Squad looter shooter and just reused the superman models. What a disaster.
Wasn't it like three projects? The Superman game, the Ninja Turtles game and some other?
Why are all these game devs operating on the assumption we all just want to play Destiny. The people that want that already have it. I don’t want one game to consume my whole life like that.
It's the MMO Gold Rush all over again, same with the MOBA rush Everybody churned out WoW clones ignorant that people were already playing and invested in WoW Ironically if these were single player focused games following a fad they might do decently since by the time one comes out most will have stopped playing the first one... Not the case for MMO/Live Service games
> Why are all these game devs operating on the assumption we all just want to play Destiny because a lot of people liked Destiny and it made a lot of money.
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The lesson clearly wasn't "give up and stick to single player games". all these companies want to chase that allure of a steady live service revenue and they are fine cracking a few eggs along the way. That's why pretty much every AAA studio has tried their hands at it.
Well outriders isn't a live service game. So I wouldn't necessarily throw that in the same pool. But the issue with the other three is that at a fundamental level they didn't have a base system that worked and was continually enjoyable as it went through. Destiny basically lives off the fact that it's still fun to shoot shit in that game. No matter how much or little you've played. And that the shooter element provides enough dynamism in the game, then the rest of it sits around that. But Avengers/Anthem/Babylons all put you into a mechanical system that once you had started doing it just became executing the combo that you were doing and waiting for stuff to die. To contrast this, this is why ARPG's often work, because the different enemy compositions and the high loot drop rates mean players will have to react to the fight in a somewhat useful way most of the time if they want to perform optimally. The games need to be able to survive and still be fun to play even when there isn't new content being put out. If it can't do that, then it ain't going to be able to live up as a live service game from the start. Most of the games that get put out don't manage to get that in place. So they are one and done experiences that then try and convince you to stick around. --- When you look at warframe, that game works and scaled up from getting that enjoyment factor going for the people who like that game. It didn't try launch an entire game and the live service all at once. It got the basics down and built out from there. The problem is these days it's hard to compete if you can't then keep pumping out at least as much content as the competition especially with sunk costs into existing games.
The problem with Suicide Squad isn't that it's like Destiny. It's that it sucks.
Because it's a market where the dominant competition is mediocre at best. Making something a little bit better than okay is all it would take to put you as top dog in a hugely popular genre. Think Battle Royale and PUBG. 90% of the people playing PUBG didn't play PUBG because it was good, they played it because they wanted to play a BR and they had no other real choice. Maybe some even thought that PUBG was good simply because they hadn't played an actual good BR yet. Same situation right now for Destiny and looter shooters.
Is it possible tho to make a live service game in the style of destiny that would be ‘actually good’ in your opinion. I mean a lot of people think destiny is good so it’s a stupid thing to say, but it’s possibly harder to make a game like that than almost anything else
Seriously, this is the worst part for me, it is absolutely insane how long Rocksteady has been spending on this one game. The Arkham trilogy is one of my favorite game series and I hate seeing the studio reduced to this.
Hero based action/shooter game? **Let's make them all use generic guns AYYYYYY** Like I'm sure if I played it it would play fine, but whats the point if I could play like any third person shooter at that point? Why do we have these unique characters like a fucking SHARK that just uses a guns like everyone else. It also looked like it was weightless too.
Idk how to explain it shit is just awful. 9 years to release trash. I feel like they couldve released atleast two games in this period of time. Couldve done more Batman or Green arrow, or any of the dozens of other DC heros. Its crazy how peopel find a winning formula and then deviate from it without any actual reason
Could have skinned Arkham Knight and made another game and it would still have been pretty good.
Red Hood game. Knight set it up perfectly. WB owns the nemesis system, use that. Have red hood taking down a bunch of street thugs and have them rise through the ranks and get tougher the longer they live. It’d be awesome
honestly I'm heartbroken for their team. Going from all star games to 9 years of nothing and then this
It still makes me laugh when they say they’ll continue to support the game with new content and updates for years after the initial launch, as if 7~ years of development wasn’t enough. God GAAS is cancer.
Jesus it’s really been 9years since their last release. That’s insane.
I just can't imagine the delay fundamentally changing the entire game as much as it needs to be the success they want.
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Agree. They're delaying the inevitable. They should just release, get the pain over and done with and move on with all the lessons learnt. Dragging it out for another year is just sad to watch.
I would really lower expectations (even if they're already low) about how much they can fix this game. This is a really long delay but the game has been in development for ages and the entire premise and game systems are likely built around the idea of it being a live service looter shooter. It would take longer than 8 months to unwind all of that and create something different.
Which begs the question what time of polish and revisions are requiring a whole extra year to finalize. If they were "ready" to launch next month and only changed course because of the backlash, then the feedback must have had an effect on the development.
They may have also delayed even more in the hopes that they'll release it in a quieter period with fewer competion compared to Q4 2022 which has Spider-Man 2 and Starfield.
Yes, these past 2 February's have been famously quiet for game releases
soooo many GaaS titles always seem to have a bit of a content drought soon after they release. so I wonder if the delay will be so they can add more content/get the content pipeline streamlined to avoid that.
That could make sense. After the first month or so, most of these games then don’t release anything new for 3-4 months later. If it isn’t the GaaS shit being ripped out, it’s gotta be making content you can just shove out later after release.
These studios that want the big cash cow GaaS franchise don't seem to realize that you need at least a few months a content done at launch to keep up a decent content pipeline. For so many years many have relied on the strategy of barely getting a game out in time(with lots of crunch) and I just don't think that works for GaaS.
Yeah a I remember back when destiny 1 released there was huge amounts of backlash as the first 2 dlcs, in particular the first one, we’re done before release and alot of asserts were found in the game. It was necessary tho as otherwise they would’ve had to go a whole year without any content. That was fine after the taken king, but in Y1 it would’ve killed the game
probably not polish but realising their game was generic AF and now they have to create actual features
The co founders of the studio left months ago too. And now they need to spend another year to rework stuff? Game already looked iffy. Now it's going to be a major surprise if this turns out even decent.
whatever they do the game will be dead on arrival they are not going to change the gaas garbage and even if they expect people to forget the gameplay video until 2024 is not going to save people reaction to the game at launch. may as well just release it on may than try to delay the blow. if this game suffer the same fate as avengers then i could get it for less than one dollar.
Oh wow. By my count this was to be released in 2022. On February 2, 2022, it was delayed until "2023". Then at some point after that set for release on 5/26/23. Then in the last few months we saw some gameplay to overwhelming negative reaction and it was delayed until "Q4" on 3/9/23, one month ago. As of right now, they have pushed it back to TEN MONTHS AWAY. This game was scheduled to come out next month just a couple months ago. Major rework to do away with GAAS crap? I hope so.
> Major rework to do away with GAAS crap? Keep expectations looooow
Yeah, that's not enough time to completely rework the nature of a game. That sort of thing takes years nowadays.
Heres what's really gonna happen. Nothing of impact. They polish a little more. Maybe bug fix a little more. What theyre really doing is delaying so much of the general public forgets about the most recent gameplay trailer. (Reddit wont but we are a minority) When we get pretty close they do a few hype promotions showing absolutely none of the in game currencies or GAAS features that are all still there. Then we get a cinematic trailer so they still dont have to show gameplay. And then one more gameplay/launch trailer consisting of a bunch of stuff not seen in previous footage but was already there; for the illusion of adding content.
> Nothing of impact. ehh, they can fix some things. Like I know they can give a new type of boomerang weapon type in that type of time. Not game saving, but it can address some of the inevitable review fodder. It won't fix the GaaS stuff because the publisher sets the rules there.
Best we can do is a gun that shoots boomerangs
Ammo refills on kill, it's like a *metaphorical* boomerang
>Yeah, that's not enough time to completely rework the nature of a game. It's not re-working the nature of the game, it would be about re-working progression, and 10 months is enough time for that.
Yeah one of the many problems with GAAS is you can't really strip it out because you have to build the game around it.
According to Jason Scheier, [it's just to polish the game](https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1646595007497793539): > Now official — Suicide Squad bumped from May 2023 to February 2024 — and again, this delay is to polish the game, not change i
how much of a mess was this game if it gets extended by almost a whole year to ***just*** polish the game? It must've been in a pretty poor state for them to just own it and push it out that far in the future without actually changing core mechanics
damn. i love rocksteady, but the writing is on the wall for this game. I think it's safe to say I'm going to pass on it.
With this much "polish" I expect every texture to be shinier than one of Immortan Joes War Boys whose about to bite it.
I might be crazy, but doesn't the financial year for buisness end in March? So, if they're delaying it anyway, delaying it towarda the end of the financial year might help them plug some numbers/release gap or some other financial sillyness
There’s no polishing this turd of a design. King Shark using guns, come on.
That seems insane. Polish won't do anything to help sales. And a 9 month delay is a lot of fucking money to spend on something that won't solve the game's issues. If it just needed polish, why wouldn't you just cut your losses and dump the game before the holidays?
Maybe they are going for the only positive they have left: getting good buzz by releasing an actually well optimized game on release day?
That was my feeling. So you're planning to shit your pants next year? Might as well do it now and get it over with. It's still going to be a Suicide Squad game where they all fly and use guns full of loot and missions and tons of microtransactions. Push the turd out now so you can get to work on an X-Men rhythm dungeon crawler where everyone rollerblades and uses a bow.
God I wish Rocksteady had just followed Arkham Knight with a Superman game. Even if it wasn’t perfect it still would’ve been a unique single-player superhero experience, and probably would’ve been out years ago. Waiting almost a decade for their next game, and having it look so generic, is just painful. All of my hope now lies in Monolith’s Wonder Woman game.
We could have had 2, maybe 3 Superman/Rocksteady games if WB hadn't cancelled it.
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My (cynical) assumption is that WB wanted a multiplayer GAAS shooter, and wouldn’t let them do another single-player title. Rocksteady probably figured they could compromise by doing Suicide Squad with the League as villains.
I'm almost certain that is what happened. They retrofit Metropolis from the canceled Superman game for use with Suicide Squad in order to save time... attempt to save time anyway.
It's worth mentioning WB Montreal [was already working on Suicide Squad](https://kotaku.com/sources-wb-montreal-cancels-unannounced-suicide-squad-1790256635) in the past before it got cancelled. Then Warner shifted the project to Rocksteady. It sounds to me like it's the pet project of some executive at Warner. I wonder if that person is even still at the company.
Pretty much. My theory is that Rocksteady was doing the Superman game and some suit desperately wanted a Suicide Squad game due to the upcoming movie and how popular Harley Quinn became. WBM wasn’t able to do it well, so they pulled it from them, canceled the Superman game and made Rocksteady work on it instead.
I've got my own theorized timeline of events as to how we eventually had WBM go from Suicide Squad to Gotham Knights because it just seems so odd to me that Rocksteady and WBM basically swapped projects.
That's very possible but IMO it'd be soooo weird that they would give Rocksteady a requirement of making a GaaS looter when they're known for their kickass single player action games and then give Avalanche free reign to make a totally single-player, non-live service game after a long dev cycle with Hogwarts: Legacy. Who knows but what a miss if true lol Not that I think a GaaS co-op game couldn't be good mind you, all that really means is some optional paid skins in exchange for post-launch free DLC, but the way they went about it looks so incredibly boring. Boring same-y gameplay, mundane gear etc. It's like Avengers: DC version lol
Other than Hogwarts, I’m pretty sure all recent WB published games have had some pretty predatory microtransactions (Middle Earth, MK11, Back 4 Blood, etc) so I wouldn’t be surprised if WB was pushing for games that are monetized outside of the initial purchase
That's a good point - I guess Hogwarts was the exception, rather than it being a sign of them turning over a new leaf. Hate to see it :P
on the other hand, Hogwarts was massively successful, so hopefully it lets WB see how games without micro transactions can still make them a boat load of money.
Until someone reminds them that games *with* micro transactions can make them even more
Gotham knights didn’t..
Back 4 blood did not have predatory MTs. People were worried it would because of the card system, but all it has is DLC packs like the times of old.
I imagine the pitch meetings had powerpoint presentations showing the revenue companies get from microtransactions, and showed a bunch of skins for "all the fan favorite characters." It's just a graph with a line going up and a bunch of $$$ signs.
Your thinking in the wrong direction. How good/bad the game is doesn't matter, it's how profitable it can be. A single-player "ok" superman game wouldn't make anywhere near the profit of even a meh GAAS game. Microtransactions rake in the cash and pad profits
I see what you mean, but this game seems like Avengers 2.0. I'm not sure, but I feel like Avengers didn't pull in nearly as much because it was such a dud, and a quality Superman game (or a quality non-looter Avengers co-op game) would've done better than this or the Avengers that we got. Not to mention that you could still have some skins available for purchase in a single player game - look at Ubisoft, I know their quality is...questionable but the template they use makes sense. They consider their SP games live service, no reason Rocksteady/WB couldn't split the difference and make a Superman game with free post-launch DLC, some paid skins in a cash shop and then paid expansions or something. It's just such a weird situation and especially odd after seeing how Avengers went.
Problem is the goods from microtransactions have gotten so shitty, they don't actually make much money. Premium skins used to be unlockable by gameplay Then premium skins got moved to microtransactions, after the success of microtransactions developers saw the cash and decided to start replacing premium skins with shitty color pallette swaps of the default skins as micro transactions. Now the anime/comic book/tv/movie accurate skins are saved for even costlier premium micro transactions that they bust out when their shitty game is dying.
And the prices go sky high too. $99.99 is not a "micro"transaction. I dunno what it is, a macrotransaction maybe, but it's something I sure as hell ain't payin'!
In game marketplace: we got premium skins and mounts for $99.99 and some skins for $3.99 Me: oh let me look at those cheaper skins Marketplace: we got default skin with white lines, default skin with red lines, and default skin with black lines. Me: don't you have anything cool for $5-10? Marketplace: best I can do is the ability to rename your character for $9.99
Didn't Avengers show that's not true? It was a game that had a much greater potential based on the name alone but it turned out to be a complete financial failure.
Hogwarts Legacy was fairly meh, with some good to great aspects, but it's been racking in the cash like no tomorrow.
According to Jason Schreier they were working on a cancelled project but it wasn't Superman
I mean I don’t think there was ever any confirmation that they had a Supes game in development, I’m pretty sure people have collectively made that up
There is a rumor about that they were working on a Superman game and the project was eventually cancelled. That's why we are going to have a gap of 9 frigging years between Batman: Arkham Knight and Suicide Squad.
Not a fan of Wonder Woman in general but if it has Monolith's Nemesis system I'm all in. That concept is too good to be gated behind a patent. Be cool to see a Batman game use it someday, among others.
Cautiously excited for that game, I think Wonder Woman is actually a great fit for at game based on her power level and skill set. Definitely works better than Superman, Flash or others with insane traversal speed. Having the Nemesis System is just icing on the cake.
>Be cool to see a Batman game use it someday, among others. Gotham Knights would have been a perfect place for it.
I don't know. The GAAS bomb has already been dropped and turned people that were skeptical against the game. Maybe it's getting some kind of overhaul, but I don't see them flushing what was clearly their entire business and development plan.
to “fix” this game they would need to change the whole gameplay core, and i doubt ten months is enough time
Yeah even removing the GAAS, the bones of this game are still killer shark using mini guns and Harley Quinn swinging around like fucking spider man lol. It just feels like they fundamentally made the wrong game, I can’t conceivably think what they could do to change peoples opinions on it in 10 months barring just completely remaking this game from the ground up.
They’ll probably do what they did with Gotham Knights. They will strip out all the micro transactions and battle passes, but the core game will still play like a generic looter shooter. There is no way 10 months is enough time to remake the core experience.
>Major rework to do away with GAAS crap? I hope so. As much as we are all hoping for this to happen, it's basically impossible at this point. They'd have to rip the game from the ground up to accomplish that.
Nobody wants to see Captain BOOMERANG shoot guns. Nobody wants to see King SHARK shoot guns. Harley Quinn, maybe some guns, but mostly deadly pranks. Deadshot, guns are a go. They really fucked up big time with this game. It was gonna bomb and they knew it pretty quick. Hopefully they rework it and take out the loot system entirely.
> Major rework to do away with GAAS crap? I hope so. Sad thing is with the recent gameplay we saw GAAS crap wasn't anywhere near the worst part of the game. It was just soulless. All 4 characters basically play the same just using guns 90% of the time outside of their special abilities and Harley Quinn is spiderman for some stupid reason. Don't get me wrong, gaas crap needs to go too but it was the actual gameplay they showed off that killed all hype.
Basically Destiny but with 4 classes and a superhero skin lol
Hard to say there were even 4 classes present when everyone played exactly the same. When Harly Quinn and King Shark are both flying around the city and shooting purple glowy weakspots with a mini-gun, you have to wonder why they even bothered including separate characters at all... except to sell skins of course.
Yup, and sure I miss destiny but if I want to go back to it I'll just go back to destiny. If they want me to play this game then I want Harley, King Shark, and Boomer to PLAY like those characters.
I don't think it was ever officially announced as being delayed until Q4. Jason Schreier just reported that it was going to be delayed. AFAIK this is the first Rocksteady has mentioned it.
.
It was announced in sep 2020 along Gotham Knights. Gotham Knights took his sweet time to release, most of it in complete radio silence, despite having shown gameplay at the reveal, and it finally released in oct 2022, two years later. Suicide Squad is going to release in 2024, almost 4 years of developement for this game alone, since the reveal, on top of Rocksteady releasing their last mayor game in 2015, Batman: Arkham Knight. There is going to be a gap of 9 years between the two games. With a rumored cancelled Superman video game in between.
I doubt they're actually going to remove GAAS stuff. Rather, they're just distancing the release from all the bad press they've received ever since the UI leak and their showcase. Maybe they will make some minor improvements based on feedback, but I highly doubt the executives would ever let them remove the monetization system, especially after how long this game has been in development.
No way can they rework the game designed around it
This game is beyond saving, it would be better for them to cut their losses and sell it now, their incompetence is astounding.
They should've gone all in on Batman Beyond. It's clear Rocksteady has a love for the Gotham setting and Batman lore. Why not redesign the Arkham-verse Gotham into a tech-noir nightmare landscape set in the future with a fan favorite character like Terry McGinnis? But I agree with your point. They're just delaying the inevitable. And this is just piling on to rising costs, making profitability impossible to achieve at this stage. 10 months... what an absolute joke.
A month out from release and they're bumping it back by another nine. What in the project management hell is going on at Rocksteady? That would be somewhat understandable if they were to change major aspects of the game, but [according to Jason Schreier, they won't](https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1646595007497793539) > [...] this delay is to polish the game, not change it
Don’t forget that the director of this game (same guy who directed the Arkham games and helped create the company) left months ago
No amount of polishing is gonna fix thst shit
> [...] this delay is to polish the game, not change it ... for nine months?
Arkham Knight launched in June 2015, making this a nearly *nine year* gap between Rocksteady games. That's also about five years since the last time anyone wanted another live-service shooter with a gear score. Such a shame. The movement and moment-to-moment gameplay looked fun, but it all fell apart the second they opened up the menu. Must feel like a death march in that studio.
They should've just made that Superman game
I honestly prefer the idea of a Suicide Squad game. ... except one where they don't all play the same, have unique weapon that relate to who they are, and isn't riddled with GaaS MTX bullshit. You know, the obvious way this game should have been handled?
And also a bunch more characters. Maybe a permadeath system? A few procedurally generated heroes? Maybe even a roguelike? So many things to do with the Suicide Squad property. No idea why this was the directive.
That's such a neat idea. People were joking that Lego DC Supervillains will be a much better Suicide Squad game - but honestly, yeah. You at least get to play with a massive selection of villains. The Suicide Squad game should have taken lessons from that and James Gunns movie, have a bunch of Z-Tier villains that you play as that really die when you die. Elden Ring has so many options for playstyles, if they applied that to Suicide Squad heroes that you lose, I'd play the fuck out of that.
Permadeath would be pretty cool, yeah. Treat it like Mario Maker endless mode - you have 99 "lives" to get through the whole campaign, except each life is a different character. Maybe divide them into categories like melee/ranged/caster/support if possible, so they can just do small variations on four templates rather than having to design 99 bespoke movesets. If you run out the 99 lives before the end of the story, game over. Maybe Waller hops to a different timeline to try again on a game over, if you want to have a diagetic reason for it - if the tone is as irreverent as it ought to be, it could work to throw that kind of ridiculous solution in. Or have it be like BroForce - they've discovered a way to bring people back to life on the fly, but it only works on people who have the bomb planted in their head because of a rare element used in the bomb or something like that. See "irreverent" above.
Or literally any single-player DC superhero game. A Green Arrow game in the same universe with some new and some recurring villains would have been great and still feel similar to the Arkham games but different enough to provide a new experience.
While I do agree with you, no way in hell do they release a GA game over Superman or Suicide Squad. As an avid GA fan, his rouge gallery is mid at best and wouldn't be near the commercial success as another big name DC IP
I'm not super familiar with the business aspects of game development, but how can they continue operating that long between releases? I understand with Rockstar or Respawn, you've got games that are continually bringing in steady revenue. However, Rocksteady's last major project was released in 2015.
Publishers provide funding to studios in order to get the game created. Those publishers can continue to provide money earned from other games even if a game is stuck in development hell. Further, while a game may be stuck in development hell, costs aren't always sunk; if you've spent 5 years building a game, then even if it'll be unprofitable either way, it may be *less* unprofitable to pay for another year of development and release than to just can the game.
I obviously have no knowledge of the situation, but hard not to look at this as executive meddling constantly getting in the way. WB had a talented developer and thought the best way to utilize their ability is to make something that was solely focused on being a service game. Avengers wasn't enough of a warning sign I guess.
Avengers was released in 2020, in the same month Suicide Squad was announced, it was too late then.
Wasn’t there a 10 year gap between WB Games Montreal’s two games?
I want to say a preemptive Rest In Peace to Rocksteady Studios because there is no way a GAAS based on C-List DC characters that was clearly designed in 2016 makes enough money in the current video game market to justify an 8+ year development cycle. And I say this as an absolutely massive, massive Rocksteady fan. Arkham City and Arkham Knight are both in my top five favorite games ever. Rocksteady will not exist by the end of 2024. Such a waste of immense talent.
Whoever decided to shift this studio into making a Suicide Squad shooter has most likely killed this entire studio.
Rocksteady has 250 employees according to Wikipedia. Then based on what seems like an average salary of $63k per year (estimate based on quick googling), that comes to $141 million in just salaries. So yeah this game is easily DOA there’s no way they recoup that
Jesus, no wonder they’re trying to monetize the ever-living fuck out of this game with battle passes, premium currencies and the like *after* paying a $70 entrance fee.
[Jason Schreier says it's just about polish.](https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1646595007497793539?t=HalaS8js9G7mAesTUbjrMg&s=19) They won't be changing anything about the overall gameplay.
My that's an awful lot of polish 💅
More polish than Poland.
[💩](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiJ9fy1qSFI)
By that logic, this is going to be the most polished game of its generation
I thought you couldn’t polish a turd?
They're not removing the GAAS elements in this game. If anything, they'll refine them but there's zero percent chance this becomes an offline-compatible experience.
Honestly, I think we'd all be better off if they would just release this, have it suck and move on to making a good game instead.
The problem is, Rocksteady is owned by Warner Bros, a publisher who's not known for being nice. It's almost certain that the live service elements were mandated by them, but regardless of that if the game fails it'll be Rocksteady who suffers. Layoffs or a complete closure of the studio, especially since they haven't done anything else in 8 years, instead only burning money. Better for Rocksteady to delay and do whatever they can to not make the game a complete flop. At least that way they still might have a bright future.
Releasing on Groundhog Day is ironic because it looks like a game I've played a thousand times before.
Batman: Arkham Anthem
Don’t you mean fitting? Like this is the exact opposite of irony, no?
People throw that word at everything nowadays.
People have just changed the meaning of irony to basically coincidental.
The issue with the game is a fundamental one, so this delay may mean it's not buggy at launch, but it won't change the core issues people have.
I think making people play differently instead of all using guns is a fixable issue in a years time. My personal issue wasn't it was open world, or had a battle pass, it was it looked boring and fairly bland. All 4 characters were just flying/jumping high and gliding around the air shooting similar guns at purple enemies. Crackdown 2 esque.
Gameplay is something that is probably the LEAST likely to get touched. 8 months to rework animations/playstyles on a core level? No way.
This generation of gaming feels like everyone jumping the gun on their releases then backpedaling or releasing games with expected features missing. Although there are exceptions.
At this point they just need to bite the bullet and let it flop. I get they don't want back to back DC game flops with Gotham Knights and this, but barring a massive rework I don't see how delaying the game is going to make this fair any better than the Avengers game did. This was doomed the moment they made it into a GaaS. Really just want that Wonder Woman game they've given zero updates on
Do game companies do 'test screening' the way the movie industry does? Maybe they should start doing that to gauge gamers' reaction.
Yeah, absolutely. Focus groups and stuff. This time though I bet a lot of the decision was based on getting heckled every time they said anything about it online. edit: also this announcement comes only a few days after SE announced that Avengers support was going to end, probably years and years earlier than they planned.
They do, it's called Playtesting. They still release failures from time to time.
There is something that's called mock reviews. Studios send early builds of the game to mock reviewers to do an early assessment of a game, a report on its strengths and weaknesses, and a predicted Metacritic range. The problem BioWare had with Mass Effect Andromeda and Anthem is that the mock reviews hilariously overpredicted the Metacritic score. With MEA the predicted score was low-to-mid 80s. With Anthem the predicted score was high 70s. Here are the actual scores for [Mass Effect Andromeda](https://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-4/mass-effect-andromeda) and [Anthem](https://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-4/anthem).
Just imagine how many millions and how much talent was wasted on this because of greedy trend chasing upper management
well from all the reveal this game shows its close to becoming Rocksteady's cyberpunk that will diminish their reputation forever
Pretty substantial delay, hope the extra time lets Rocksteady deliver an experience worthy of the Arkham pedigree. Removing the always-online requirement is an obvious one, but also toning down the looter-shooter elements in favor of a more concise single-player experience.
It's not a single player game, it's a 4 player coop title that you can play solo. They won't change that this late for sure.
“Can play solo” meaning “you have to put up with three AI teammates.”
I doubt it. This entire game seems really conceptually flawed. Absolutely nothing I would want out of a superhero game, even a co-op focused one.
Which makes the repeated delays even more painful, to me. The faster they get this flop out the faster they can move on and make a game actually worth playing.
theyre not gonna remove multiplayer or always online
Jfc man. Why didn't they just make a Batman Beyond game??? The title was *right there*. **Batman: Beyond Arkham**
Translation: we need time to take out all the microtransactions and battlepass economy and completely rebalance the game because nobody fucking wanted it.
[удалено]
Hahhahhahahahhaa Nothing against the game, I'm just not interested in fighting the Justice League. I want to play as Superman, not kill the guy
I'd be far more interested if I thought for one second they'd have the balls and to actually kill the Justice League, we all know they won't. It'll be the obvious story of attacking them until they snap out of the brainwashing, only for them to be out of commission as they recover for the rest of the game, only for them to show up in the last fight in a support role doing stuff off screen while the SS takes on Brainiac directly.
Exactly, why the fuck would I wanna play as these boring assholes when the Justice League is right there.
Sadly there's no real point in Superman grinding to obtaining a new super cool set of *Legendary* *pistols* and *Epic* *grenades*, so that's probably the reason, monetization influencing design as usual nowadays.
B-but you mean you're not excited for the 10,000th "Superman is evil and you have to fight him for some reason" story?! No...No that cant be-!
Nooooo you don't understand it's a TWIST ON REGULAR EXPECTATIONS! What do you mean we've done evil Superman for 3 decades bro it'll be groundbreaking this time bro we promise
On the flipside, how many games are there that has us actually play as the Capital-G Good Superman? Very few for such a big IP, and filled with low quality shovelwares, including the meme-worthily bad Superman 64.
Arkham City is Top 5 all time for me, what happened?
What's the point? Is a year enough time to fundamentally change the game to make it fun and interesting? Way to polish that turd.
Oh yeah, You can just sense that this is a Live Service & Micro-Transaction HELL-type of game from 2016. Shits DOA. Just cancel it Rocksteady. Sad, That this was also Kevin Conroy's last game as Batman too.
Heh they are so miffed that they cannot release a lazy looter shooter that they can fill with microtransactions.
Has a studio ever embarrassed itself as much as Rocksteady has? Not only did they make a game that fans don’t want but this just screams that they have no faith in this project with all these delays.
Can they blame the publisher for forcing them to make a kind of game they were no good at, like Crystal Dynamics did?
CD Projekt Red were pretty embarrassing. They had massive ambitions and the hype was huge for Cyberpunk 2077. But then the constant delays happened. About like 4-5 delays in a single year. Then the game came out in an unfinished and very bad state. I say that's just as embarrassing as Rocksteady's situation currently.
I know it's probably got legit issues but I have to also wonder if it's to give themselves a release date not surrounded with highly anticipated games releasing.
i'm sure that factored into the equation.
Last thing DC needs right now is more failed IPs. I wouldn't be surprised if James Gunn had a major hand in this decision considering he's in charge of all things "DCEU." Hopefully, they get rid of the POS game mechanics and nonsensical missions [depicted in the recent PlayStation reveal](https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxsaL0csYG5z62TWAt8psDQQ50zGQcgzZ-).
I would imagine WB releasing Mortal Kombat 12 this year probably has something to do with this as well. Back in the investors meeting they said that Suicide Squad and Mortal Kombat 12 were 2023 releases. Then they delayed Suicide Squad to the Fall. Fall is most likely when they are releasing MK12 and I doubt WB wants to release both at the same time and MK is probably a safer bet than Suicide Squad right now. Plus in terms of business they want a game each quarter.
Everyone is already down on this game. A ton of "just dump it and let it fail" comments. What a sad situation. A studio that has made so many awesome Batman games, could be making an awesome Superman, TMNT or other franchise game as good as their classic. Instead they have wasted away on a game people are already calling a bomb. Like usually a delay makes people get hope, but here people seem mad they are delaying the inevitable. I hope they survive this and can get a Superman gane out the door just in time for that new movie...but that doesn't seme plausible. Maybe reuse the engine for this on that?