Warner Bros Expected Suicide Squad To Become A Billion-Dollar IP

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Bawal Zehri

At HI Digital I test and write about different hardware configurations to show other PC users what they can expect from their build. My end goal is to educate the masses to make the right decision when they are looking for new PC parts to buy

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Warner Bros was very ambitious with Suicide Squad. With the publisher’s best team leading development, the potential of live-service, and characters from DC comics, what could go wrong?

Unfortunately, Suicide Squad became a huge failure at release. It led to $200 million in losses for Warner Bros, but a new report highlights how unrealistic the publisher’s initial expectations were.

According to very reliable sources, the studio hoped Suicide Squad would become a billion-dollar IP.

Why it matters: Very few franchises in the industry can claim to be worth a billion dollars, making this expectation quite strange from the beginning.

Suicide Squad launched in February as an ambitious superhero live service title from Rocksteady, which had an incredible record of releasing successful games till that point.

Famous for pioneering the Batman Arkham series, this studio had never been known for releasing a bad game. This changed in 2024, and Bloomberg’s latest report highlights many of the problems faced by Rocksteady throughout its development.

According to the report, leadership was often slow to provide feedback on the game’s vertical slices. Elsewhere, the publishers put the team in a difficult situation by asking them to move out of their single-player comfort zone.

Feedback from Warner Bros. was also far from optimal. The studio would praise the graphics and tout it up to be a blockbuster IP. However, they failed to realize how badly the IP would fail in the face of intense live-service competition.

Once key leadership departed from the studio, Rocksteady’s ambitions quickly turned into a nightmare. Many still held out hope that the game would eventually come together, but it never did.

According to the report, the team hopes to create a single-player game next. In order to redeem itself, it intends to return to its roots.

However, another report also states that Rocksteady is under the threat of being completely shut down by Warner Bros. Therefore, it remains to be seen what the future holds for this developer.

Bawal Zehri

[How-To Guides Expert]

Laiba, our tech guru at HI Digital, simplifies and crafts How-To Guides with a Google IT Support Certificate. Beyond tech, she captures the city’s aesthetics through her lens. Join her journey where tech meets creativity!

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