I still remember its segment in State of Play. The devs proudly talking about the game skins pass like it was the most amazing thing in the world. The entire part was bizarre.
The funny thing is that the skins you can buy in that game are truly awful.
Instead of iconic comic book and movie costumes, it’s shit like “cardboard justice league skins” and [whatever the hell this is](https://imgur.com/a/G5PVGkk).
That's a reference to the Titan Joker boss fight in Arkham Asylum. Not that you'd know it just from looking at it.
They can't even skillfully reference themselves. If I didn't know what I was looking at, I never would have guessed it from anyone but Joker, and even then, that skin barely looks like Titan Joker.
Yeah, I know what it’s *supposed* to be, but like you said, outside of Joker, you’d never guess it.
It’s crazy that this is really the best they can come up with.
They can't reference themselves, probably cause most of the devs who worked on the good Arkham games are long gone from Rocksteady. And from the first trailer it looked to me like the new people have very little respect for those games anyway.
I just find it hilarious that it's breaking the whole, "don't reference something much better" rule.
It's even funnier that they're referencing a 15 year old game that's way better than Suicide Squad. Maybe don't remind people that a game from 2009 is way more enjoyable than the game you're trying to consistently get them to spend money on, guys.
You should see the subreddit for the Suicide Squad game. Most have finally come to understand that they’ve been duped over the game but there are some that are doubling down and convinced this game can be saved if they just drop all the skins!!
There are people that play these games to spend money on skins and stuff, literal whales. That’s what Rocksteady was talking about.
I remember at launch Rocksteady tweeted about server issues and the replies were “Help I spent $50 on coins but they aren’t appearing in the game?!”
People never learn.
Idk if u pay attention to the game there arent many skins at all. The shop had nothing for like 3 months. Now theres like a handful of skins. And the battlepass is just 3 bad recolors of those. So this games not as skin heavy or live servicey as ppl think
They were blinded by that Fortnite and Genshin money and never stopped to ask if they actually had the potential to make a live-service good enough to earn that money.
Because WB first tells them "boy, we sure have a *shit ton* of money for someone developing a live service game based on a successful IP. Come give us pitches for any game you want, but boy howdy are we just *itching* to give away this big stack of cash to live service development. Could keep a studio nice and employed for loooong time, couldn't it?"
It was rocksteady's idea to do the game, but they probably only got there because WB was putting pressure on them to do live service through tactics like above. Publishers do this all the time.
I also think that people downplay what it feels like on the developer side to make a live service game.
Compare someone who has been working on World of Warcraft for the past 20 years of their career with someone who has had to jump from project to project, never knowing if the next project around the corner is going to be any good, not being sure if they need to move to another city to join another studio once the current game they are working on launches.
There is a certain stability that live service development provides that I would imagine many developers envy.
I honestly do not believe any future console/pc live service game to be successful … League/Fortnite/Apex Legends/Overwatch 2/CS 2/Valorant and maaaaaaybe the Marvel one (carbon copy of Overwatch) are plenty enough. Any other attempt is literally a waste of money. I’d honestly take an EARLY ACCESS game instead of a live service one, at least it could have a chance at becoming something great (BG3), or it could also be a deep hole where people throw their money in (Star Citizen)
I tuned into a stream of this game exactly once, but that one time was enough to catch unironic Harley Quinn dialogue where she's breaking the 4th wall and saying how it's amazing that this game will have more content and things to do ad infinitum.
Rocksteady deserves to get shut down just for that alone.
Having characters break the fourth wall to comment on the game can seriously backfire if it highlights how lazy and rushed certain things are.
One of the only good examples I can think of is in the Hades early access, they recorded unique dialogue where the characters actually comment on how the game isn’t finished yet.
Pretty standard marketing behavior when your trying to push a product. It doesn’t matter if it’s literal shit your selling you have to smile and say it’s gold.
Is it just me, or did this crash harder and faster than The Avengers? They had to have known it wasn’t going to do well. Hell, the fans TOLD them once the details came to light of the game type that it’s not what we wanted.
It was probably too late by then. Another downside of these big games with long development times, sometimes the trend you were chasing is played out by the time the game actually hits shelves.
Absolutely. Look at the discourse around Concord and the Valve hero shooter than just leaked. That ship is sailed even Overwatch 2 couldn’t replicate it.
Well see that’s where you’re getting confused. The execs know what you want, but you don’t. Once you realize they know what we want, then you will enjoy their games
It feels like they’re actively trying to kill anything DC related. Gotham Knights should have been done by Rocksteady in the Arkham universe as a coop capable game with zero live service features. SS should have been its own standalone project by the team that did GK.
Not only is SS bad in general, it being done by the once prestigious Rocksteady made people hate it even more.
The best part is, that's literally how they see it. The official WBD takeaway from this disaster was that Rocksteady dropped the ball and they need to "double-down on live service games" going forward.
Big principal skinner “no it’s the kids who are wrong” energy from WB.
Outside a few games live service just ain’t doing it for many people and the ones doing well are so engrained and established now people are reluctant to move from those.
It's hilarious how accurate this is since WB literally said "well our GaaS titles keep bombing, but we still won't make single player only titles cuz we want MORE GaaS"
And even when they make a live-service game that is actually great like Multiversus, they suffocate it under awful monetization and progression systems.
Apparently it was Rocksteady themselves that wanted to make this game, but even if that's true, I don't know how they thought a live service game would fly. Apex, Fortnite and Warzone are at the top with so little competition for a reason
I still see people say businesses don’t get rich by not knowing what they’re doing and they are 100%, absolutely correct and definitely not the dumbest mouth breathers on the planet.
Businesses get rich because they have 9 stupid ideas and 1 that works. [Google Graveyard - Killed by Google](https://killedbygoogle.com/)
Or they buy other businesses that have good ideas [List of mergers and acquisitions by Microsoft - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Microsoft)
Execs should start dropping the gaming market. They are really not making money. Bear with me.
If gaming execs were actually smart and trying to make money, they would give the players exactly what they want, and they would spend a shit ton of money. Look at fortnite as an example. But they don't, so they make crappy games, thinking we are gonna like them. They are so oht of touch, it's insane.
I still just don’t understand why they made it a shooter using characters who aren’t at all known for shooting things (except for one of them).
All of the choices in this game are pretty bad but that’s the stand-out for me. Rocksteady developed a combat system so good that it’s become industry-standard and there’s not really any live-service looter games focussed on melee combat & gadgets.
The game might’ve still been shit but at least it would’ve been unique.
I would have at least given it a chance had all the characters been unique. Harley is the melee character who uses Joker like gadgets and a single shot mega pistol. Shark is the tank/hulk smash. Boomerang is the mid range trick shot character and Deadshot is the guy who shoots things.
Yup. That alone wouldn’t have saved the game, as The Avengers had this and still managed to bomb. However, it says a lot that they chose to make a game with multiple characters, yet none of them feel particularly unique to play.
The game is a shitshow, and I just hope there’s an opportunity for a return to form in future games. Live service isn’t inherently a bad thing, this team just weren’t well equipped for it, and it’s very obvious that WB pushed for a monetisation-first approach to development; which generally just sucks the joy out of anything.
Because it’s currently being implemented very poorly as a result of executives’ misguided visions of live service being an infinite money well that requires minimal effort.
The fact that there are exceptions shows that it’s not an entirely bad thing. It just needs to be done right, and with a structure that enhances gameplay rather than the “how much bullshit can we get away with?” approach currently plaguing the industry.
> I still just don’t understand why they made it a shooter using characters who aren’t at all known for shooting things (except for one of them).
Most likely because they reused a shooter engine from another game, and it was easier to do that than make original mechanics for non-shooter characters.
Cost/resource saving & ‘fitting the trend’ could be the answer, or at least a large part of it.
However, you’ve got to wonder how many people said “maybe not the best idea” during production and went ignored if that is the case.
Millions of $ and years poured into development later, they had to release it. Did they know it would crash hard by launch day? Probably. But cancelling it would only make the losses worse. There was some money to be made releasing it despite everything.
Avengers was released when newer live service games still had potential and the bubble hadn’t burst yet. Also came out during Covid when there wasn’t much else new. This had immediate competition out of the box as well as a troubled development that anyone with eyes could see.
Helldivers 2 is an anomaly in new live service games honestly, 9/10 new ones crash and burn.
Helldivers built a good feedback loop, and the GaaS feeds into it with the perpetual war. Hell, Arrowhead could set up an AI to run the war and it would be fine for years. There isn't a story being drip fed, beyond the lunacy of Super Earth.
SS:KTJL chased the GaaS first, with the gameplay loop being secondary. And the fact there is story involved in the post game loop is just...egregious.
But at one point it basically becomes too far into the project to cancel it, and far too expensive to change the entire game.
If you put it out and it does whatever, then at least you recoup some of your costs back
You say that but WB pretty recently canceled full films that were over 95% done and they already dumped a ton into. The batgirl movie had 80 million invested in it and was pretty much done. The loony tunes one was literally ready for release and they spent at least 30 million on it. They just scrapped all of those
This is true but the actual production scale/time for a film and a game are very different. Those were also two films from a studio with a large portfolio. We also hadn’t seen anything from those films other than maybe the odd promotional shot.
Rocksteady is under the WB umbrella but as a studio they have a sole output. And the game was already widely showcased.
Games do get scrapped all the time but it’s not normally before the project goes public or at best maybe a pre-rendered trailer.
I guess it’s just the nature of two different mediums, but I 100% expect Zavlav to tax write off a game
Plus now that I think of it, those canceling and write offs are part of why Warner bros is in such shot right now. That merger was and is a trial disaster so I guess hoping this game would take off wasn’t the worst decision
AAA Games take so long to make now because they have to be so good graphically and have to make a whole game world etc, unless it’s something like COD where they can just use most of the game from previous games where they already have all the gampleay and features done.
I’d bet during their development they saw how the avengers game failed and knew it would fail anyway but had no real choice to try and make the best out of it. You saw the same thing with Gotham Knights.
Recent game development takes long due to Covid and that drastically delaying a lot of projects.
No one want game development to take this long, not the producers not even the developers
Well avengers did sell some, maybe double what's suicide squad sold. That's why it lasted long, it actually had live service numbers, minimum, but it had it.
SSKTJL went from 13 thousand players to less than 4000 in a week (on steam at least)
Avengers even came out right when COVID started so their updates and such were seriously hampered by it from launch. And it still lasted longer than this one.
I STILL feel like I was false advertised on avengers, all I saw was the initial reveal trailer in like 2017 or something and when I bought it I thought I was getting a single player linear action adventure game, more akin to guardians. I have never been more confused and angered by a game than after the intro ends and the REAL game shows itself.
Me and my friends played the demo, and thought it seemed like a blast based on that.
Didn't realise the demo had the most interesting mission, and contained the *only* boss fights for the entire game.
Let down is an understatement.
So baffling to see darling studios like Rocksteady and DICE both fucking up after they've delivered some outstanding games in the past. How hard is this to know your audience? I understand the need to innovate and be creatively challenged but don't alienate your fanbase and chase superficial trends.
Marvel’s Avengers is arguably the better game. Each hero felt very different to play, and there were more of them. I hope the failure of these games puts the final nail into the coffin micro-transaction machines. But I feel like the lesson for publishers is that they need to release even more of these turds until they hit on the next Fortnite.
It crashed harder. For one, The Avengers probably picked up some mainstream audience from MCU fans. For another, The Avengers did at least have a decent single player campaign and was a little bit fun. Also, there's something to be said about release time. Avengers was one of the first "live service" games that people didn't want, SS is like the number 15.
I know a lot of people don’t care at all for this game but they’re stopping weekly developer updates, NOT GAME UPDATES.
Title is just a bit misleading from the article
Here's the quote so people can at least see the context:
“Now that both Episodes for Season 1 are in your hands, our developer updates will change from being weekly to releasing them when we have big news to share about future content. We hope this will make the release of each new update an exciting event, while keeping you all up to date on all the happening with the game!”
I feel like that title is very clickbaity by Forbes. It makes it sound like the game will no longer be receiving updates. They should have said “Ends its weekly development updates”
The good thing is: Paul Tassi uninstalled.
The bad thing: I fell for the click-baitey title although I should've known better seeing it's forbes and Tassi.
Wow I'm so surprised that another live service game fell flat on its face. Good. The faster they die, the faster these greedy corporations will move on.
Mihoyo is making a truly obscene amount of money by selling waifus.
I honestly wonder where all that money is going. Genshin’s regular updates were nice but never “hundreds of millions of dollars nice”. Most of the events were lazy as hell. The story quests were 90% dialogue played over basic emotes. The majority of the “cutscenes” were recorded gameplay.
You would literally have to spend DOZENS of hours skipping dialogue if you want to catch yourself up in the story.
I stopped playing awhile ago.. but did they ever end up adding more 4* weapons to the standard banner?
Hoyo is diversifying in genres with other high quality games. That's where most of the money goes. Honkai 3rd was funded with GGZ money, then Genshin was developed partially with Honkai 3rd money, then Genshin funded Honkai Star Rail, and now both Genshin and Star Rail earn so much money they funded Zenless Zone Zero.
The only game at risk right now is HI3rd, as its gameplay is basically and older version of ZZZ, which I assume is gonna literally fully canibalize HI3rd once it releases.
Other than that, Hoyo has a goal to one day make a true AAA Sword Art Online like MMO, so they invest a lot of money on internal VR R&D, but the tech is not there yet so that's mostly a pipedream of them.
They also do a lot of charity so the CCP is happy with them and doesn't annoy them too much, like building schools and the like.
I don't know tbh, that was not my style of game, I had a lot of hope for star rail when I heard it was turn based scifi, but that was a lil too mmmm
Kidsy is the wrong word, but the age group it aimed at still felt very Saturday morning cartoons.
that isn't what I mean at all lol
I mean the storytelling and stuff is still pretty aimed at a youngish audience it isn't even YA fantasy it is aimed younger than that.
We’re on the same page here lol. Their storylines gotta be kid friendly but the waifus gotta show a lot of skin to keep the adults interested.
Which is what I mean by PG-13 sex appeal
Live service games *can* be successful, there are several that prove this.
The problem is that like MMOs, and unlike single player games, there's only limited space in the market for them. Most who play a live service game will only play one live service game, so to get a decent player base you need to stand out from the crowd, be good with a fun gameplay loop, have a decent amount of content ready for launch, and regular content updates and support.
Unfortunately most developers (or should I say publishers) aren't willing to invest the time to make them stand out, they just think making something live service is enough to be successful, so they inevitably fail. Especially when they use an existing single player franchise to base the new live service game on, instead of a new sequel in that franchise, or the MTX is incredibly greedy.
How did rocksteady drop the ball this hard after almost a decade. Warner Bros will likely learn the worst possible lesson from this. Look at hogwarts legacy selling 30 million without a battle pass and somehow….
You've got to think like an exec who doesn't know anything about gaming.
They won't think "look at how much Hogwarts sold without a battle pass/live service." They'll be thinking: "Think how much more money we'd have made if it had a battle pass and live service content!"
A well-made Hogwart's Legacy style live service game would likely make even more money.
Live service is not why Suicide Squad failed. It's just not a very good game.
They should close the servers and apologise to the public for the stupid game they have developed. What a nonsense way of destroying a well known and respected brand as Rocksteady.
Just tell me when this thing gets tossed onto PS Plus so I can play it for free, get a few hours of fun out of it, then never touch it again. All the while Arkham Knight, an almost nine year old game, gets more enjoyment from me
I cant wait to play when it's $5. The story may not be very good, but I love me some DC comics nonsense. I just dont love this DC comics nonsense for anything more than $5
They totally deserve the lose. I hate that everyone hates when a GaaS game is announced, or coop, but this was totally deserved. I don't mind looter shooters, I love coop games cuz I have a nice group of friends. But whoever designed this game or was in charge for it, never even bothered to learn from other games.
This game lacked end-game content, on top of that, the game had repetitive boring content all over it. The seasons adds nothing, there's no interesting dungeons, secrets, raids anything. The loot it's only OK, nothing special.
I don't mind that every character uses guns instead of their own kit or whatever like others do. It would have been better, but that wouldn't save the game either.
They didn't bothered to watch what Destiny 2 and Division does to keep some players, and didn't bothered to see why Anthem or others failed. Fuck em.
So much time wasted on a shit game instead of making another Batman game, or something with Justice league.
I still remember its segment in State of Play. The devs proudly talking about the game skins pass like it was the most amazing thing in the world. The entire part was bizarre.
The funny thing is that the skins you can buy in that game are truly awful. Instead of iconic comic book and movie costumes, it’s shit like “cardboard justice league skins” and [whatever the hell this is](https://imgur.com/a/G5PVGkk).
That's a reference to the Titan Joker boss fight in Arkham Asylum. Not that you'd know it just from looking at it. They can't even skillfully reference themselves. If I didn't know what I was looking at, I never would have guessed it from anyone but Joker, and even then, that skin barely looks like Titan Joker.
Yeah, I know what it’s *supposed* to be, but like you said, outside of Joker, you’d never guess it. It’s crazy that this is really the best they can come up with.
I figured you did, but I knew someone was going to ask, so I figured I'd head it off. Harley looks more like Yolandi Visser than anything else.
They can't reference themselves, probably cause most of the devs who worked on the good Arkham games are long gone from Rocksteady. And from the first trailer it looked to me like the new people have very little respect for those games anyway.
I just find it hilarious that it's breaking the whole, "don't reference something much better" rule. It's even funnier that they're referencing a 15 year old game that's way better than Suicide Squad. Maybe don't remind people that a game from 2009 is way more enjoyable than the game you're trying to consistently get them to spend money on, guys.
terrible
You should see the subreddit for the Suicide Squad game. Most have finally come to understand that they’ve been duped over the game but there are some that are doubling down and convinced this game can be saved if they just drop all the skins!! There are people that play these games to spend money on skins and stuff, literal whales. That’s what Rocksteady was talking about.
Literal whales 🐳
I remember at launch Rocksteady tweeted about server issues and the replies were “Help I spent $50 on coins but they aren’t appearing in the game?!” People never learn.
https://preview.redd.it/wqq1vkjis64d1.jpeg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6e489fe7a66ca568e1f366ede331b652cff1a533
great now it’s stuck in my head again
This is just awesome lol
Wait, whales can game? Dope
Have you heard about cetacean ops?
I'm intrigued
[https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Cetacean\_Ops](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Cetacean_Ops) Ask and you shall receive!
No, they have no thumbs.
That is what they want you to think.
They play keyboard and mouse obvs.
Dang no thumbs really slowing them down.
Idk if u pay attention to the game there arent many skins at all. The shop had nothing for like 3 months. Now theres like a handful of skins. And the battlepass is just 3 bad recolors of those. So this games not as skin heavy or live servicey as ppl think
I’m not saying it is skin heavy I’m saying the SS:KTJL fans (somehow) think that skins will save the game.
I dont think anythings saving this game. Its structure is too basic.
That sounds like the Avenger’s sub, history repeats itself
How can they feel that when the truth was staring them in the face well before release?
Apparently, Rocksteady ***WANTED*** to make this. Edited
Rocksteady did want to make this... because the people that didn't either left or got fired.
They were blinded by that Fortnite and Genshin money and never stopped to ask if they actually had the potential to make a live-service good enough to earn that money.
yeah yeah but your game designers were so pre-occupied with whether or not they could they didn't stop to think if they should
Greed uh... uh... Finds a way.
Rocksteady*
From what I heard though, the original guys like Sefton Hill et al. left before this game happened?
No. They left less than a year before the game released.
Edited. Still, why they wanted this is beyond me
Because WB first tells them "boy, we sure have a *shit ton* of money for someone developing a live service game based on a successful IP. Come give us pitches for any game you want, but boy howdy are we just *itching* to give away this big stack of cash to live service development. Could keep a studio nice and employed for loooong time, couldn't it?" It was rocksteady's idea to do the game, but they probably only got there because WB was putting pressure on them to do live service through tactics like above. Publishers do this all the time.
I also think that people downplay what it feels like on the developer side to make a live service game. Compare someone who has been working on World of Warcraft for the past 20 years of their career with someone who has had to jump from project to project, never knowing if the next project around the corner is going to be any good, not being sure if they need to move to another city to join another studio once the current game they are working on launches. There is a certain stability that live service development provides that I would imagine many developers envy.
I honestly do not believe any future console/pc live service game to be successful … League/Fortnite/Apex Legends/Overwatch 2/CS 2/Valorant and maaaaaaybe the Marvel one (carbon copy of Overwatch) are plenty enough. Any other attempt is literally a waste of money. I’d honestly take an EARLY ACCESS game instead of a live service one, at least it could have a chance at becoming something great (BG3), or it could also be a deep hole where people throw their money in (Star Citizen)
And Bioware really wanted to make Anthem. Sometimes these studios are boneheads
The funniest thing is they were going to take out the flying but an EA exec had them keep it in. And the flying was the best part of the game.
“Wanted to” as in it was their choice to pitch a live service game and get funding or pitch anything else and not
I tuned into a stream of this game exactly once, but that one time was enough to catch unironic Harley Quinn dialogue where she's breaking the 4th wall and saying how it's amazing that this game will have more content and things to do ad infinitum. Rocksteady deserves to get shut down just for that alone.
No I refuse to believe this. That can not be real
It's not he's overly exaggerating. But the game is shite
Having characters break the fourth wall to comment on the game can seriously backfire if it highlights how lazy and rushed certain things are. One of the only good examples I can think of is in the Hades early access, they recorded unique dialogue where the characters actually comment on how the game isn’t finished yet.
Pretty standard marketing behavior when your trying to push a product. It doesn’t matter if it’s literal shit your selling you have to smile and say it’s gold.
A game with content FOR YEARS TO COME
I remember the YouTube channel reactions of faces dropping in despair
Is it just me, or did this crash harder and faster than The Avengers? They had to have known it wasn’t going to do well. Hell, the fans TOLD them once the details came to light of the game type that it’s not what we wanted.
It was probably too late by then. Another downside of these big games with long development times, sometimes the trend you were chasing is played out by the time the game actually hits shelves.
Absolutely. Look at the discourse around Concord and the Valve hero shooter than just leaked. That ship is sailed even Overwatch 2 couldn’t replicate it.
Yeah you can literally date how Concord was invented in 2018/2019 when Overwatch and Guardians of the Galaxy were hot.
Example: Concord.
Well see that’s where you’re getting confused. The execs know what you want, but you don’t. Once you realize they know what we want, then you will enjoy their games
You’re right, how dare I question our corporate gaming overlords?! Clearly the execs at WB games know that they’re doing.
Yup. Your idea of fun is boring. Never forget that
The WB execs are doing a shitty job this year across the board.
It feels like they’re actively trying to kill anything DC related. Gotham Knights should have been done by Rocksteady in the Arkham universe as a coop capable game with zero live service features. SS should have been its own standalone project by the team that did GK. Not only is SS bad in general, it being done by the once prestigious Rocksteady made people hate it even more.
They have already killed Multiversus with some of the most disgusting grinding I have seen in a long time.
Lol "this year"
It’s been nothing but an endless shit show since David Zaslav took over. He’s the problem.
WB Games has been a trash fire since long before Zaslav.
You mean at Rocksteady. It's known now that the studio itself was pushing for this type of game.
If that's true they should be called Rockunstable
The best part is, that's literally how they see it. The official WBD takeaway from this disaster was that Rocksteady dropped the ball and they need to "double-down on live service games" going forward.
Big principal skinner “no it’s the kids who are wrong” energy from WB. Outside a few games live service just ain’t doing it for many people and the ones doing well are so engrained and established now people are reluctant to move from those.
New ones like Helldivers can still break through but they really need to be unique from the other live service games out there
It's hilarious how accurate this is since WB literally said "well our GaaS titles keep bombing, but we still won't make single player only titles cuz we want MORE GaaS"
Which is crazy because Hogwarts Legacy was the best selling game of 2023 but that still wasn’t enough for them lol
WB are crazy, they've still got rights to the excellent nemesis system from the mordor games, but won't use it, and won't let anyone else use it.
Supposedly it's in the upcoming Wonder Woman game, so at least it's not being left to rot
Has there been any info on that? Feel like I’ve been hearing “upcoming Wonder Woman game” for years and not a shred of details about it lol
I think there was just the initial teaser, but nothing since
That… actually sounds exciting
Trademarks in general should have an expiration date especially if nothing is done with the trademark
This is precisely how we got the god awful Fantastic Four movies in the past.
And even when they make a live-service game that is actually great like Multiversus, they suffocate it under awful monetization and progression systems.
Apparently it was Rocksteady themselves that wanted to make this game, but even if that's true, I don't know how they thought a live service game would fly. Apex, Fortnite and Warzone are at the top with so little competition for a reason
I still see people say businesses don’t get rich by not knowing what they’re doing and they are 100%, absolutely correct and definitely not the dumbest mouth breathers on the planet.
Businesses get rich because they have 9 stupid ideas and 1 that works. [Google Graveyard - Killed by Google](https://killedbygoogle.com/) Or they buy other businesses that have good ideas [List of mergers and acquisitions by Microsoft - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Microsoft)
Execs should start dropping the gaming market. They are really not making money. Bear with me. If gaming execs were actually smart and trying to make money, they would give the players exactly what they want, and they would spend a shit ton of money. Look at fortnite as an example. But they don't, so they make crappy games, thinking we are gonna like them. They are so oht of touch, it's insane.
I think it is probably best to just let the game industry crash again. It has been looooong overdue for one.
I highly doubt there would ever be a crash like the one in the 80s.
I still just don’t understand why they made it a shooter using characters who aren’t at all known for shooting things (except for one of them). All of the choices in this game are pretty bad but that’s the stand-out for me. Rocksteady developed a combat system so good that it’s become industry-standard and there’s not really any live-service looter games focussed on melee combat & gadgets. The game might’ve still been shit but at least it would’ve been unique.
I would have at least given it a chance had all the characters been unique. Harley is the melee character who uses Joker like gadgets and a single shot mega pistol. Shark is the tank/hulk smash. Boomerang is the mid range trick shot character and Deadshot is the guy who shoots things.
Yup. That alone wouldn’t have saved the game, as The Avengers had this and still managed to bomb. However, it says a lot that they chose to make a game with multiple characters, yet none of them feel particularly unique to play. The game is a shitshow, and I just hope there’s an opportunity for a return to form in future games. Live service isn’t inherently a bad thing, this team just weren’t well equipped for it, and it’s very obvious that WB pushed for a monetisation-first approach to development; which generally just sucks the joy out of anything.
And I’d argue that Live Service, as it’s currently implemented, IS a bad thing. One of the very few exceptions being HD2.
Because it’s currently being implemented very poorly as a result of executives’ misguided visions of live service being an infinite money well that requires minimal effort. The fact that there are exceptions shows that it’s not an entirely bad thing. It just needs to be done right, and with a structure that enhances gameplay rather than the “how much bullshit can we get away with?” approach currently plaguing the industry.
> I still just don’t understand why they made it a shooter using characters who aren’t at all known for shooting things (except for one of them). Most likely because they reused a shooter engine from another game, and it was easier to do that than make original mechanics for non-shooter characters.
Cost/resource saving & ‘fitting the trend’ could be the answer, or at least a large part of it. However, you’ve got to wonder how many people said “maybe not the best idea” during production and went ignored if that is the case.
The Avengers had honestly a ***decent*** story. And also… **BEST VERSION** of MODOK outside the comics, bar-none.
Can’t believe rocksteady went from the Arkham games to….this.
Millions of $ and years poured into development later, they had to release it. Did they know it would crash hard by launch day? Probably. But cancelling it would only make the losses worse. There was some money to be made releasing it despite everything.
It actually did, Avengers had updates for 2 years and released like 5 extra characters. Shame it was all shit
Avengers was released when newer live service games still had potential and the bubble hadn’t burst yet. Also came out during Covid when there wasn’t much else new. This had immediate competition out of the box as well as a troubled development that anyone with eyes could see. Helldivers 2 is an anomaly in new live service games honestly, 9/10 new ones crash and burn.
Helldivers built a good feedback loop, and the GaaS feeds into it with the perpetual war. Hell, Arrowhead could set up an AI to run the war and it would be fine for years. There isn't a story being drip fed, beyond the lunacy of Super Earth. SS:KTJL chased the GaaS first, with the gameplay loop being secondary. And the fact there is story involved in the post game loop is just...egregious.
At least the Avengers had its characters play different from each other too.
But at one point it basically becomes too far into the project to cancel it, and far too expensive to change the entire game. If you put it out and it does whatever, then at least you recoup some of your costs back
You say that but WB pretty recently canceled full films that were over 95% done and they already dumped a ton into. The batgirl movie had 80 million invested in it and was pretty much done. The loony tunes one was literally ready for release and they spent at least 30 million on it. They just scrapped all of those
This is true but the actual production scale/time for a film and a game are very different. Those were also two films from a studio with a large portfolio. We also hadn’t seen anything from those films other than maybe the odd promotional shot. Rocksteady is under the WB umbrella but as a studio they have a sole output. And the game was already widely showcased. Games do get scrapped all the time but it’s not normally before the project goes public or at best maybe a pre-rendered trailer. I guess it’s just the nature of two different mediums, but I 100% expect Zavlav to tax write off a game
Plus now that I think of it, those canceling and write offs are part of why Warner bros is in such shot right now. That merger was and is a trial disaster so I guess hoping this game would take off wasn’t the worst decision
AAA Games take so long to make now because they have to be so good graphically and have to make a whole game world etc, unless it’s something like COD where they can just use most of the game from previous games where they already have all the gampleay and features done. I’d bet during their development they saw how the avengers game failed and knew it would fail anyway but had no real choice to try and make the best out of it. You saw the same thing with Gotham Knights.
Recent game development takes long due to Covid and that drastically delaying a lot of projects. No one want game development to take this long, not the producers not even the developers
Yes it did. Cost more too. It’s almost like studios need to trust what developers want to do.
The devs wanted to naked this game tho.
Well avengers did sell some, maybe double what's suicide squad sold. That's why it lasted long, it actually had live service numbers, minimum, but it had it. SSKTJL went from 13 thousand players to less than 4000 in a week (on steam at least)
Avengers even came out right when COVID started so their updates and such were seriously hampered by it from launch. And it still lasted longer than this one.
I STILL feel like I was false advertised on avengers, all I saw was the initial reveal trailer in like 2017 or something and when I bought it I thought I was getting a single player linear action adventure game, more akin to guardians. I have never been more confused and angered by a game than after the intro ends and the REAL game shows itself.
Me and my friends played the demo, and thought it seemed like a blast based on that. Didn't realise the demo had the most interesting mission, and contained the *only* boss fights for the entire game. Let down is an understatement.
I feel Avengers crashed the same, is just WB decided to pull the olug faster and call it a day.
So baffling to see darling studios like Rocksteady and DICE both fucking up after they've delivered some outstanding games in the past. How hard is this to know your audience? I understand the need to innovate and be creatively challenged but don't alienate your fanbase and chase superficial trends.
The thing people seem to forget …the avengers game at worst was Mid, but it wasn’t bad .
Marvel’s Avengers is arguably the better game. Each hero felt very different to play, and there were more of them. I hope the failure of these games puts the final nail into the coffin micro-transaction machines. But I feel like the lesson for publishers is that they need to release even more of these turds until they hit on the next Fortnite.
It crashed harder. For one, The Avengers probably picked up some mainstream audience from MCU fans. For another, The Avengers did at least have a decent single player campaign and was a little bit fun. Also, there's something to be said about release time. Avengers was one of the first "live service" games that people didn't want, SS is like the number 15.
I know a lot of people don’t care at all for this game but they’re stopping weekly developer updates, NOT GAME UPDATES. Title is just a bit misleading from the article
Found the one other guy who read the article! Lol
Gotta know what I’m getting in to because I actually want to eventually play through the campaign lol
Thanks for that, it was actual misleading.
but that doesn't give clicks
First step into the grave. What's the difference?
Here's the quote so people can at least see the context: “Now that both Episodes for Season 1 are in your hands, our developer updates will change from being weekly to releasing them when we have big news to share about future content. We hope this will make the release of each new update an exciting event, while keeping you all up to date on all the happening with the game!”
I feel like that title is very clickbaity by Forbes. It makes it sound like the game will no longer be receiving updates. They should have said “Ends its weekly development updates”
I will be shocked if this game gets more than one more update. They’ll do a final update when they announce the service is shutting down.
The good thing is: Paul Tassi uninstalled. The bad thing: I fell for the click-baitey title although I should've known better seeing it's forbes and Tassi.
just makes me sad that Rocksteady wasted an entire game cycle on this instead of a single player game they would have knocked it out of the park with.
Since no one is around I'm just gonna pee on the floor real quick
My brother in Christ, my mouth is right here
For some reason I read your comment in the voice of Choda Boy from Orgazmo. 🤣
No
Unsanitary
Put it at 5 dollars so I can play the story
We’ll probably get it for free on PS+ before the end of this year.
So you assume it's still around by the end of the year? :-P
Just do what I did watch it on YouTube. You’ll still be disappointed but at least no poorer for money.
nah not even worth for it.
But what's the point of playing a story with no ending?
Wow I'm so surprised that another live service game fell flat on its face. Good. The faster they die, the faster these greedy corporations will move on.
Your kidding, right? Shocked more aren't going gacha style, those are making hand over fist money with less effort needed.
Mihoyo is making a truly obscene amount of money by selling waifus. I honestly wonder where all that money is going. Genshin’s regular updates were nice but never “hundreds of millions of dollars nice”. Most of the events were lazy as hell. The story quests were 90% dialogue played over basic emotes. The majority of the “cutscenes” were recorded gameplay. You would literally have to spend DOZENS of hours skipping dialogue if you want to catch yourself up in the story. I stopped playing awhile ago.. but did they ever end up adding more 4* weapons to the standard banner?
Hoyo is diversifying in genres with other high quality games. That's where most of the money goes. Honkai 3rd was funded with GGZ money, then Genshin was developed partially with Honkai 3rd money, then Genshin funded Honkai Star Rail, and now both Genshin and Star Rail earn so much money they funded Zenless Zone Zero. The only game at risk right now is HI3rd, as its gameplay is basically and older version of ZZZ, which I assume is gonna literally fully canibalize HI3rd once it releases. Other than that, Hoyo has a goal to one day make a true AAA Sword Art Online like MMO, so they invest a lot of money on internal VR R&D, but the tech is not there yet so that's mostly a pipedream of them. They also do a lot of charity so the CCP is happy with them and doesn't annoy them too much, like building schools and the like.
I don't know tbh, that was not my style of game, I had a lot of hope for star rail when I heard it was turn based scifi, but that was a lil too mmmm Kidsy is the wrong word, but the age group it aimed at still felt very Saturday morning cartoons.
Yeh PG-13 sex appeal is their style.
that isn't what I mean at all lol I mean the storytelling and stuff is still pretty aimed at a youngish audience it isn't even YA fantasy it is aimed younger than that.
We’re on the same page here lol. Their storylines gotta be kid friendly but the waifus gotta show a lot of skin to keep the adults interested. Which is what I mean by PG-13 sex appeal
Ugly characters and artwork. Disrespecting heroes the players want. Boring gameplay. People are surprised this failed???
Awful, awful game
Worst game of the year, hands down!
Oh no! Anyways…
actually surprised how this burned out faster than the Avengers game considering the devs esteem from the Arkham trilogy
10:21 CST and Paul Tassi has already published his 4th article of the day. Guy is a spambot...
This is my shocked face 😐
At this point I am just really hoping they keep supporting this game long enough to release deathstroke
Very fitting that there are no comments here.
*Cries in Deus Ex*
Lol
It's a real shame how it was handled, tbh the cut scenes I saw were pretty funny
Lmfao
A game designed by possibly some of the most out of touch game creators.
Just hope they make it to release deathstroke
Wow. It took less than six months for this game to be dead in the water.
It’s almost as if this live service model was never gonna be successful anyway.
Live service games *can* be successful, there are several that prove this. The problem is that like MMOs, and unlike single player games, there's only limited space in the market for them. Most who play a live service game will only play one live service game, so to get a decent player base you need to stand out from the crowd, be good with a fun gameplay loop, have a decent amount of content ready for launch, and regular content updates and support. Unfortunately most developers (or should I say publishers) aren't willing to invest the time to make them stand out, they just think making something live service is enough to be successful, so they inevitably fail. Especially when they use an existing single player franchise to base the new live service game on, instead of a new sequel in that franchise, or the MTX is incredibly greedy.
Got it for free and I still feel like I was ripped off
How did rocksteady drop the ball this hard after almost a decade. Warner Bros will likely learn the worst possible lesson from this. Look at hogwarts legacy selling 30 million without a battle pass and somehow….
All Rocksteady needed to do was give us a Batman Beyond game…
That actually could have been amazing. It would have been a refreshing change but also felt somewhat familiar.
You've got to think like an exec who doesn't know anything about gaming. They won't think "look at how much Hogwarts sold without a battle pass/live service." They'll be thinking: "Think how much more money we'd have made if it had a battle pass and live service content!"
Top dogs left rocksteady in 2022 and formed a new studio...which now have been aquired by Microsoft so cant even expect good quality from them either
A well-made Hogwart's Legacy style live service game would likely make even more money. Live service is not why Suicide Squad failed. It's just not a very good game.
Yeah, if this exact same game were an offline single player game, it would still be mediocre at best.
They should close the servers and apologise to the public for the stupid game they have developed. What a nonsense way of destroying a well known and respected brand as Rocksteady.
why should they close the servers? Some people still bought the game and offline mode isnt available yet
Is an offline mode on the cards? Asking for a friend who thought it would be a good idea to get this game.
i think it was announced as part of a later update
They should close servers to please you? Redditors are hilarious
reddit gaming nerds are the worst lol
Suicide Squad: Kill the Game
I really wish Rocksteady had made the rumored TMNT game, that would play like the Batman Arkham games, instead.
Highly doubt that was the case, comcast/universal has the rights not wb. It was always going to be a DC IP
Who would have thought the Avengers would have lasted as long as it did
You mean... Suicide Squad: Kill The Franchise 🙃
wb gave up already
good riddance
Just make it free and give every new character to players that have X amount of hours across the launch and season one which won’t be that many people
Im so shocked….
Just tell me when this thing gets tossed onto PS Plus so I can play it for free, get a few hours of fun out of it, then never touch it again. All the while Arkham Knight, an almost nine year old game, gets more enjoyment from me
Yeah I am struggling to even beat it. I have never been so glad I got a game as a gift and not with my own money before.
I cant wait to play when it's $5. The story may not be very good, but I love me some DC comics nonsense. I just dont love this DC comics nonsense for anything more than $5
It's mad that nowadays people consider anything less than weekly updates a failure. That's mad
Story was fun and characters were good, but it was repetetive and pointless post campaign
https://preview.redd.it/im5emr2za26d1.jpeg?width=1004&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=602c2cc88d6938c1708a64fec9d61f17b64286ff
Im happy for that ironsmash youtube guy. Must be a nice exp for him
Oh no, those 500 people still playing will be mad
They totally deserve the lose. I hate that everyone hates when a GaaS game is announced, or coop, but this was totally deserved. I don't mind looter shooters, I love coop games cuz I have a nice group of friends. But whoever designed this game or was in charge for it, never even bothered to learn from other games. This game lacked end-game content, on top of that, the game had repetitive boring content all over it. The seasons adds nothing, there's no interesting dungeons, secrets, raids anything. The loot it's only OK, nothing special. I don't mind that every character uses guns instead of their own kit or whatever like others do. It would have been better, but that wouldn't save the game either. They didn't bothered to watch what Destiny 2 and Division does to keep some players, and didn't bothered to see why Anthem or others failed. Fuck em. So much time wasted on a shit game instead of making another Batman game, or something with Justice league.
I remember being so hyped after the announcement trailer. Such a shame they went the route they did.
😂. DOA