Suicide Squad Unlikely To Drop Controversial Element Fans Are Unhappy About
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League will be a live-service game.
You can always count on Warner Bros. Games to ruin a potentially great title. An example we often like to use is 2017’s Middle-earth: Shadow of War, which many fans believe was ruined by the company’s greed and pursuit of microtransactions—something that Epic Games is currently refunding. However, Warner Bros. Games’ latest endeavor to make its upcoming Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League a live-service game has the fandom riled up and pretty unhappy.
As reported by VGC, following our previous report about Suicide Squad being pushed to the latter half of 2023, Jeff Grubb, a reputable industry insider, shared that the game might be pushed further to 2024. Warner Bros. Games did address the news regarding the first delay, stating that the game’s developer is taking extra time to polish up the game. It also stated that, despite very strong criticism by the fans, Rocksteady Games wouldn’t rework the game’s live service elements, which the company claims would only contain cosmetics.
However, it would seem that the purported microtransactions aren’t the real issue gamers have with AAA live-service games such as Suicide Squad. The core of the issue lies deeper, and it’s tied to a recent trend in which gaming companies use high-profile IPs to create mediocre games and litter them with low-quality skins to increase their profits. This results in games such as Marvel’s Avengers, which face shutdown as soon as their operating expenses outgrow the revenue they generate. These games typically have a very short lifespan of about two to three years.
So, not only do the gamers pay a premium price—which has gone up—but their favorite gaming title is rendered unplayable after only two to three years just because the publisher pulled the plug on the game’s support. There are good live-service games; 2012’s Diablo 3 is a great example of how a live-service game should look like.
Even after 11 years on the market, the game still provides an engaging narrative and great gameplay while sidelining in-game stores and paywalls. The same can’t be said for its mobile cousin, but hopefully, the upcoming Diablo 4 will maintain the standard.
Interestingly enough, Grub also shared that, despite the criticism, those who had the opportunity to work on or test the upcoming Suicide Squad actually have a lot of positive things to say about the upcoming game, especially compared to Gotham Knights—as stated at the beginning of our discussion, leave it to Warner Bros.Games to ruin a potentially fantastic title. So, it seems that the live-service elements of Suicide Squad are here to stay; Rocksteady is known for making great narratives, so we should expect the same level of quality we received from Diablo 3 back in 2012.
Suicide Squad was originally planned for a 2022 release date, but the game’s launch got delayed from May 2022 to spring 2023. However, WB Games pushed the game to May 2023 in December last year, followed by another delay that pushed the game to the latter 2023—the precise release date is still unspecified.
