Having only released this January, Rocksteady no doubt had big plans for their “Games as a Service” model comic book crossover game, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. Unfortunately, ever since its announcement years ago the game has had nothing but negative press, so the inevitable drastic dips in players, eventually hitting depressing sub-500 players on Steam, was probably expected by most gamers. What wasn’t expected, was that Rocksteady is stopping its weekly updates.
As reported by Paul Tassi on Forbes, it looks like things behind the scenes at Rocksteady are a bit rough, at least in terms of the Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League’s development. As you’d expect, games made under the Games as a Service model tend to rely on drip feeding content to its players over the course of years to turn a profit, so for Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League to cut that drip feed away a mere 5 months after release bodes poorly for the game’s health overall.
While this isn’t necessarily the game dying, this is definitely not a good sign moving forward. Though it’s an outcome many suits at Warner Brothers should have seen coming, since the unpopularity of the GaaS model has been prevalent since the concept was introduced, not to mention a similar game, Crystal Dynamics’ Marvel’s Avengers, had a similarly rough launch that ended with that game’s life ending early, and again while this doesn’t necessarily mean that Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is dead, it’s a sign that it may not be long for the world.
But, as we’ve reported before, Warner Brothers is for some reason pushing forward with GaaS model games, so it’s unfortunately likely that we’ll be seeing many more Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League and Marvel’s Avengers type stories in the future of any game with the WB logo stapled onto it.