Rocksteady has confirmed that the current season of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League will be its last, a decision that surprises absolutely no one. The game, a disastrously woke deviation from the beloved Arkhamverse was shaped by a collaboration between ideological activists at Rocksteady and Sweet Baby Inc.
With its release on February 2, 2024, being an unequivocal failure, an official shutdown announcement seems all but inevitable in the coming months.
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League will go down in gaming history as a prime example of a big-budget commercial flop in 2024. The game’s live-service model, riddled with uninspired gameplay and aggressive monetization, only added insult to injury. It brazenly disrespected DC’s iconic characters and franchises, opting for heavy-handed diversity and inclusivity pandering instead of respecting its source material.
Its narrative was drenched in feminist ideology, alongside radical redesigns of beloved characters to make them less “sexualized” and, arguably, more off-putting. One glaring example was the transformation of Harley Quinn, the iconic femme fatale, into a butch, disfigured caricature that seemed more like a mockery of the original character than a meaningful reimagination.
This release stands as a cautionary tale of what happens when prioritizing ideological messaging eclipses delivering a quality gaming experience.
Despite being a paid experience, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League leaned heavily on its live-service model, an online only experience awash with server connectivity problems that relies on a large pool of recurring players to spend money on in-game cosmetics, themed bundles, and other microtransactions.
However, the highly anticipated AAA title quickly faltered, managing a peak of just 13,459 players on PC on launch day before plummeting to the hundreds a mere month later.
Unsurprisingly, the game turned out to be a colossal flop. Shortly after its release, it was discounted, with Warner Bros. placing the blame for a staggering $200 million loss squarely on Rocksteady and the game itself. Seasonal updates, instead of revitalizing the player base, introduced controversial changes, such as an emasculated and potentially homosexual version of the Joker, alongside gender-swapped renditions of other characters like Mr. Freeze, who was reimagined as an overweight, masculine lesbian.
These updates did little to draw back its nearly non-existent player base.
By the time of the Autumn sale on Steam, Suicide Squad was being offered at a massive 95% discount, which did cause a temporary spike in player numbers, reaching a peak of 2,500 from just 110.
However, this influx of bargain-bin players will likely dissipate quickly, knowing that the next seasonal update will be the game’s last. With Rocksteady having wrapped up the final batch of content actively in development since release, support for the game will effectively cease less than a year after its debut.
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League will release its final character, Deathstroke, as part of Season 4 in January 2025. This will mark the end of all new content for the game, with Rocksteady confirming that the game will enter “maintenance mode.”
While the servers will remain online for the time being, Rocksteady is introducing an offline mode this week. This will allow players to enjoy the main story campaign and all post-launch season content without an internet connection, which is a clear indication that Warner Bros. is preparing to shut down the game’s online services in the near future.
Players wishing to access offline mode will need to create a new profile specifically for this feature, either by copying their existing online profile or starting fresh. Additionally, progression will be separated between online and offline modes, meaning any progress made in one will not carry over to the other so if you don’t create a new profile within the next few months you may miss your chance to carry over your progress.
The future of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, including its digital currency and optional paid cosmetics, remains unclear. However, it’s likely that the game will follow a similar trajectory to Marvel’s Avengers, another big-budget live-service game that flopped and was shut down just a couple of years after release.
In that case, the game was heavily discounted in an attempt to attract as many new players as possible before its online services were discontinued. All in-game microtransactions were removed, and paid cosmetic items were made available for free. We can likely expect something similar for Suicide Squad once it is officially phased out.
While Marvel’s Avengers served as a cautionary tale about the pitfalls of live-service models and the importance of balancing them with a satisfying single-player experience void of subversive ideology, Rocksteady’s Suicide Squad arguably went a step further. It offered subpar content at full retail prices and released without any assurance of offline play.
The game was designed to align with the modern trend of diversity and inclusivity, incorporating identity politics and prioritizing creating a “safe” experience, one that avoids offending those who may be easily outraged while seemingly sacrificing any sense of femininity or traditional character design.
Since its disastrous release, Warner Bros. has been scrutinized for its investments in sexually discriminatory initiatives like the “Women and Non-Binary Leadership Program,” which aims to challenge the gaming industry’s “male-dominated” nature and create career development opportunities for women and non-binary individuals.
At the same time, Rocksteady faced significant layoffs, with its core team shrinking from 33 employees to just 15. The commercial failure of Suicide Squad played a major role in their restructuring, but even with these drastic cuts, the game’s queer-focused direction and controversial updates remain unchanged, and it seems unlikely that future projects from the studio will stray from this ideological approach until Rocksteady as a whole is dissolved entirely.
It took nearly a full year, but it’s notable that an offline mode is being introduced to Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. However, this addition comes with the bitter acknowledgment that the game is on its last legs, as the upcoming season update will be its final one, effectively ending the forgettable live-service game less than a year after its lackluster launch.
